Sudoku Magic is similar to Sudoku Grab, but we improve on the two main use cases:

1. Playing Sudoku. We want to give players a better Sudoku experience. Simple things like tactile sounds and highlighting the current row, column and square make people happy. (The aesthetic still has a long way to go though.)

2. Showing off. People mostly use our application to amaze their friends. That's why we show as-it-happens images of the vision algorithms. We're still finding ways to make it cooler. Any suggestions would be much appreciated :)

We actually got this working in J2ME back in 2005. We were negotiating a distribution deal with a handset manufacturer, but the discussion slowly went nowhere. They wanted it on a wider range of handsets than was feasible, as camera access on various handsets was significantly broken. For example, checkout http://www.scribd.com/doc/17740520/Samsung-Z-Series-Handsets...

- In the Z140, asking for a 640x480 image gave you a 320x240 image, squashed and repeated twice.

- In the Z540V, asking for a 320x240 image gave you an image which was green and skewed!

Thank god for platform homogeneity.

At the moment it doesn't look like you show -how- the solver solves the problem. Showing how your solver works, by visualizing backtracking / guesses it makes, would be really cool.

Good point and good idea :)

couldn't one argue that if you see what its doing - it isn't magic? it's quite clear what its doing, and that isn't magical.

if its just a black box and it comes up with the solution - thats magic.

I do seem to remember a Pratchett quote that conjurers amaze you twice - once with the trick and once with the trickery.

Don’t miss this blog post about the technique behind Sudoku Grab: http://sudokugrab.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-does-it-all-work....