Mobile Search Meets Image Recognition; Is Visual Search Ready For Prime-Time?
Visual and multimodal search have fascinated me from the start. However, I could only dedicate a few pages in Chapter 9 (!) of my last mobile search report to the topic. (Happy to report my upcoming VisionGain report will showcase these path-breaking technologies – so again my open invitation to multimodal search companies to contact me directly.) In 2004-5 when I conducted most of the research for my industry-first report, NevenVision was the one to watch (Google did – and snapped the company up in 2006). Today Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have image recognition/image search projects. And this recent article from Red Herring tells us Nokia is also hot on their heels with Point&Find. (Nokia tells me this will be applied to improve both local mobile search and enable immediate-gratification mobile commerce – but more about this in an exclusive podcast.)
While doing my research for an in-depth feature on image recognition applications (set to be published soon in New Media Age), I discovered that companies including LTU Technologies, a provider of image mining software founded by a group of MIT and Oxford scientists, and DSPV, an Israeli provider of visual search solutions based on its own IP.
Predictably Japan has embraced visual search big time. This snippet from Japan’s Cellphone Edge blog reports that Bandai Networks just launched Search by Camera! ER Search, a service that allows camera-phone users to take a photo of a CD cover or poster and search for the information about that artist or band, using image recognition technology provided by US-based Evolution Robotics.
Bandai Networks, which has partnered with Label Mobile, has “digitized more than 150 thousand of label’s CD covers, which cover the large part of the domestic market,” the blog says. The service is targeted at DoCoMo users, who can download it for free. Of course the Java application – also known as an iappli – is only compatible with DoCoMo’s handsets.
[BTW: Japan is also where a cool service provided by CyberMap Japan, owner of Mapion, a mapping services company, and Geovector, a location-based services company, is gaining serious traction. It's now available on over 2 million Sony Ericsson, Kyocera, and Casio mobile phones using the KDDI network. In a nutshell, the service lets users point to and receive information about over 700,000 points of interest (POIs) across Japan. GeoVector has also added 3D capabilities to create a world-first mobile search service that not only finds and identifies buildings, but also allows objects inside to be visible to users standing outside. This recent BusinessWeek feature – which quoted our regular contributor Chetan Sharma – has some details on the service and an interview with John Ellenby, GeoVector President.]
