Step out

May 27, 2008 by pmelcher.

Sometimes it is good to step out in order to better look in. In this 25 minutes video, Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, goes over image search, segmentation and other challenges that face anyone that is trying to built a better search.  What is interesting in this is how he speaks over and over about that its all about working with the data you have and not power coding. If you analyze the data you have ( data can be replaced by images, obviously) then you get a more agile platform.

In the case of photography, we tend to add more data ( think keywords) to an already huge set of information. We wrap data with more data, which never made sense. Google, TinEye, Riya and many other companies seem to have taken the lead in a area where photo agencies should have been the precursors. It is fascinating to see how many companies will sell you a Image Database management system that is really a keyword database management with images attached to them. None even use advance text search technology and let you suffer thought metada building on your own.

On the flip side, Image Buyers are still relying on a guessing game, trying to find the right image with a varied source of words. Very archaic, isn’t it?

Take a peak at the video here :

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