Xcavator pushes visual search technology with new image portal
The visual search company, Xcavator, has taken a bold step to promote its technology to the stock photo industry. Rather than seek on-line archives to license their visual search product it has launched its own image portal that employs visual search as the primary method for finding images. Having launched the beta version of the portal with 300,000 image form Photovault, the company recently added 1.8MM images from the iStockphoto, Getty’s micro-stock division.
Bryan Calkins, CEO of CogniSign, the company that developed Excavator, says they launched the portal as a way to create more demand for visual search technology. Users can easily drop a small digital file of a reference image for which they seek a visual match into the portal’s image search field as if entering a keyword. The site will retrieve images from its database that match the color and composition of the reference image. Users can refine the search further with text keywords. “With both visual search technology and keyword search deployed at our portal, we completely redesigned the stock photo browsing and selection experience”, Calkins says, “Visual search creates a second and more powerful search query language, taking some of the pressure off keywords and meta-data. They are still extremely important, but do not need to be as extensive or as exacting. For example, subject matter keywords can be more finite and color keywords can be eliminated”.
The company has not revealed the exact terms of their relationships with Photovault and iStock, but Calkins says CogniSign will receive revenue from the image providers in connection with the sales Xcavator generates for them.
Calkins adds that the technology has applications beyond the stock photo industry, especially in the world of on-line shopping. Xcavator anticipates helping on-line shoppers find that exact pair of high fashion shoes or a specific item on eBay.
Website: www.Xcavator.net
Comments
Similar visual search technology is available for licensing at http:// server.imgseek.net
A demo searching around 30k Flickr images is available at http:// fs.imgseek.net/
Posted by: Ricardo Cabral | June 22, 2007