RSSMicrosoft Looks to Photos for Search
By the Betanews Staff | Published April 17, 2006, 3:50 PM
Microsoft is working on a way to search the Internet by submitting a photo shot by a cell phone to represent what the user is searching for. The effort is part of a bigger project by Microsoft Research called Photo2Search to make search technologies more usable on cell phones. The search engine would return Web sites that match items in the photo, or similar photos found across the Internet.
By including the details of what a photo captures, Microsoft says the results produced are more useful. According to Microsoft researcher Xing Xie, "the value of camera phones on daily information acquisition" has been overlooked. The findings are planned to be released in mid-May as part of a larger research paper titled "Photo-to-Search: Using Camera Phones to Inquire of the Surrounding World" in Nara, Japan.
Why is it that everytime someone has a great idea the overwhelming reaction from people on the internet is to focus on what the technology “can't” do.
If you took the time to go to the Microsoft Research website and searched the net for 2 or 3 minutes you would be able to get a better idea of what this is intended for.
Sure if I point this thing at a pair of football boots it will have no idea if I mean soccer, rugby, grid iron or aussie rules football boots and would probably get “shoes” at best.
If I instead point the camera at the barcode on the box we are talking a different story.
Competitive shopping sites and Google’s “innovative” Froogle should watch out.
This is one of many different ideas they have for this technology.
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|This is the same as going into a restaurant and immediately getting served their top selling meal with beverage. "Hey, we just want to make it simple for you, sir". :)
So no, even if I explicitly told you I am looking at a movie poster for Movie XYZ, there is no way in the world you could know whether I want to know who stars in it, to buy a ticket, see how much it grossed, when it was released, or a billion and one other questions I may have had in mind. Scrolling through a menu giving me those options is extremely lame when I can specify exactly what I wanted in a search box "[where was it]filmed in".
To me it makes more sense to SPEAK what I am looking for, and have my cell phone send that request for speech recognition or possibly even human assisting in giving you the best info you could possibly want on it... Why? Because you'd wanna sell me something together with the answer... (the ticket, an audio commercial), or just because I'm paying a monthly fee for those researched answers...
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|So now we don't even have to put any thought into typing those confusing word things to look up stuff on the internet.
Screw edukashion, let’s just cater to a nation / world of illiterates.
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|Wow, another useless way to spend millions.
I want to search for my stocks in microsoft, what do i take a picture of?
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|I'm sorry. But I think you need to broaden your horizon a little.
Microsoft Research spends millions on "useless" technologies such as this one. Only a small percentage of these stuff actually make into a real product.
But this is how innovation works.
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|lmao
microsoft...innovative?
i don't think so
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|Microsoft? No. But Microsoft Research does a lot of really interesting, cool, and, yes, innovative things.
Unfortunately, most of it never sees the light of day, but then most of it probably isn't interesting to most people either.
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|Let's see how long it takes Microsoft to buy out this company and incorporate their technology with Photo2Search:
http://www.myheritage.com/
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|LOL. The site is fun. But it's mostly crap, I think. Still too immature.
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|Wow, The possible misuse of this tool brings a smile to my face. :)
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|all of a sudden the word "porn" came to mind
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|And why shouldn't it? It's a major driving force in most media-based industries these days...
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|i agree
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