March 2, 2010 by pmelcher.

You know there is a problem when a company selling you a service treats you with superiority and disdain. Somewhere in the sale cycle, someone hates the fact that they should be at the client service and not the opposite.

Take software solution companies, for example. They usually work in a vacuum creating  some software solution that they decide is very cool and once finished, look around to see if there is a market for it. There’s usually a market for everything. Once they find the market, they approach the “non software” people in a attempt to sell it. Because they usually fall on non technical people who have no clue on how difficult it has been to design and implement what they are trying to sell, they are quickly branded as “idiots”, “retards”, or “useless”. Nevertheless, the software company still needs to make money to cover the costs of creating and maintaining there operation. So they reluctantly continue  selling their product/services to the “incompetent idiots” that are not understanding the genius behind the applications they are buying.

The software companies stay very very close to their software peers in order to compensate and gather as much praises from them. After all, a praises from a peer is so much better than one from your clients. They couldn’t care less what their customers say about their products and what improvement they would like to see, as they see them as inferior that are only there to pay their bills. Like monkeys trying to explain to you how to operate your car. They come to really disdain this relationship whereby they have to take money from “idiots”. All they want is to be recognized as the new Google, get millions in funding and be admired by other programmers.

There is no love in a application creator/client relationship. We have seen it and we still see it in the photo industry. Since going digital, and especially after the billions spend by Yahoo for Flickr, a little flock of software companies, mostly start ups, have knocked on the doors of this market. And reluctantly did so. From database management to image recognition, they have found and develop some interesting tools for this market. However, they disdain the fact that they have to rely on poorly technology educated photo people to make a living.

What are the signs of such companies ? Well, first and foremost, very poor communications skills. Do not return emails or phone calls or take a very, very long time doing so. Would you answer quickly to someone you despise ? They certainly don’t.

Poor or in existent sales team. Usually handled by an entry level person that has absolutely no power. He/she is obviously at the bottom of the pole at this company, and while usually very nice and understanding, a complete waste of time to communicate with.

No training or well thought out documentation. You either get it, like they do, or you are a complete moron that wouldn’t even understand a step by step instruction, so why bother ?

They want you to come to them. Since their creation is so genius, you should be begging to use it, not the opposite.

Finally, and probably the most important, they turn their creation into a “Solution”. Although they have develop an application that they thought was challenging enough to do, they will come to you as if they have found a cure to your problems. They will take the high road and declare: “we are here to save photography”. They take a superior stand to any seasoned professional and explain with a condescending air of ultimate superiority that they know what is wrong with the Photography business and that their software/app/service is THE solution. All like little messiah, they have a greater purpose than selling their companies services. They are here to save you from yourselves.

Let’s be realist. They are all in it to make money. Lots and lots of money. Nothing more and nothing less. They hide there real intention behind a mask of fake benevolence. Most have this annoying unsaid little scheme that if they can corner the market, they can turn around, raise prices, and get a choking stronghold on this universe. In the mean time they rack millions in investors money with this promise.

While technology is certainly a tool for growth, it is also full of the worst snake oil sellers one can ever meet. Their efforts are not as pure as they say. All of them are trying to make a profit , and as large as possible. So next time they ring at your door, think about their business model. How do they intend to get rich on your back. Sure, everyone deserves to be paid. But, is it worth it for your business ?.How tied up will you find yourself if they succeed in cornering the market ? Who will benefit the most ? You, or them ?

Most importantly, if they then do not respond promptly to your emails ( remember, these guys are on their computers/ smartphones 24/7 ), then you know that they could care less about you. And it’s time to move on.

Posted in technology, idee, picturemaxx, gumgum, commercial stock, copyright, license, finance, photoshop, flickr, web 2.0, transaction | Print | No Comments »

December 10, 2009 by pmelcher.

It is just a question of time. Not years but probably months. Already a lot of desktop consumer based application are offering a glimpse of its power : Image recognition. Google has recently taken it a step further. Search with Image recognition.

“The concept of Google Goggles is dead simple- a user snaps a photo of an object around them, be it a book, building, text or any other object, and the app will return a search result tailored to for that object” explains mobilemarketingwatch.com.

Say you walk in front of a building and would like more info, just snap a picture of it, submit to Google Goggles and voila. Same goes for CD’s , Books, paintings and maybe photographs too. Still in its infancy, Google Goggles , when launched live, will mark the debut of image recognition  as a replacement of text search. For now, the Goggles project is limited to objects. Soon, once the Google lawyers can figure how to get around privacy laws, it will also work with people too. Meet someone new. Take a snap and in 5 seconds, you will know there whole history. Well, at least the one available online.

What does it mean to the photo industry ? Many, many changes. First, a new way to search. All database will soon be able to also offer such a search to their clients. Google tends to create standards. It is nit a bad thing, except for the technophiles out there. Just imagine: Your metadata could be incorrect and image would still be found.  A few companies already offer this technology but not as deep as Google. LTU tech or Idee, for example, will do image matching . That is, if images look similar, regardless of what is in the image. Goggles recognizes what is in the image and looks for that, and not similar images.

Google new visual search will mainly be a huge help for image key wording. Since its inception, it has been notorious for offering free API’s ( that’s a little backdoor that lets two applications talk together) to its technologies. That will allow savvy programmers to tie an image database to Goggles and have all its image indexed automatically. Those microstock will be all over this technology.  While certainly incapable to add emotion or concepts, it will however facilitate a lot of the tedious work of recognizing content.

Companies like Imense who is currently offering similar technology will certainly take a huge hit. Same goes with Idee and its CD or book Iphone apps.

While there is nothing dramatically new in this technology, it is the shear power of Google already indexed document that will make this a success. They will be hardly any images that will not return a result, besides maybe those “artistic” ones.

If you have an android phone, you can try it now : Google Goggles.

Posted in idee, technology, commercial stock, celebrity, keyword, web 2.0, google, editorial | Print | No Comments »

June 3, 2009 by pmelcher.

If you are at CEPIC this week, in the lovely city of Dresden, Germany, here are few people you HAVE to see. If you are not going, no problem, they all have a website too.

WorldAssignement.com: Brainchild of Pierre Pankotay, serial entrepreneur , WA is a new platform that finally brings photo agencies and Photo editors together. On a worldwide level. The idea is simple and the execution brilliant. Say you are a photo editor in one country seeking to get a job done in another country. Thanks to WA, you can do a search on multiple fields, based on your needs, and find the appropriate photographer at the appropriate location with exactly the right skills. Since all the photographers in the database belong to a photo agency, you are guaranteed a pre-screening and not fall on some over confident schmuck.

From now on, it will be easy for a magazine, lets say in South Africa, to find a photographer that has diving skills and speak fluent polish equipped with an Olga for a photo shoot in Brazil. A few clicks away easy. Quality guaranteed. More info at worldassignment.com.

PixTrakk : About to be launched by the team behind Pixpalace France and USA, PixTrakk will finally help photo agencies track usage of their images whether in Print or on the web. Because PixTrakk is created by people who have triple experience in publishing, photo agency and technology, it is poised to quickly become an absolute necessity for any photo agency looking to automated their billing or simply keep track of where their images have been published. A combination of three technology power houses, LTU Technologies, TNS Media and Pixpalace, Pixtrakk will finally give user an option not to use the obscenely expensive PixID from Iphone App company Idee, inc. It is scheduled to be launched in September.

Not sure if they have a table but Keedup, New Zealand  based keywording company, is also  ready to change the market. Already well established in editorial keywording, it has launched a specialized service for celebrity agencies. The concept is revolutionary in so much as not every type of agency should use the same standard of keywords, as it is currently done. The markets, thus researchers, use completely different sets of keywords, depending on what market they work in. Yet most keywording companies apply the same rules whether the images are Sports, news or Commercial Stock. The world is about customization, its about time keywording is too.

Of course, you can also waste a whole day attending the IPTC summit and learn some more nothing about nothing or listen to some heated debate  between people you have never heard about about topics you really do not care about. The choice is yours.

Posted in idee, magazine, technology, commercial stock, celebrity, IPTC, CEPIC, web 2.0, keyword, HOLGA, editorial | Print | No Comments »

May 29, 2009 by pmelcher.

Here are a few of the most revolting persistent aspect of the photo Industry:

- Blogs that get people fired

- Blogs or magazines written by people that have never ever worked in the Photo Industry yet consider themselves experts on all it’s aspects.

- Photo agencies that do not pay their photographers.

- Photo Agencies that license images under cover of a “Research or Service Fee”.  They simply take images, usually offered for free, and sell them with absolutely no right to do so.

- People that confuse easy to copy with free. It’s not because you can download an image easily that you can use it for free.

- People that use images without asking first.

- Geeks that launch microstock companies every minutes because they can.

- Hackers that spend their days breaking in photo agencies databases and stealing hundreds, if not thousands of images.

- Photographers that think they are photographers because they learned how to properly light a scene.

- Photographers that think they are good because they have been in business for a long time. Persistence is not a measure of quality.

- Photo agencies and photographers that price their images with their feet. The photography business is like driving a car, if you don’t know what you are doing, you are a danger for the rest of us. Please step out.

- Corporations that beleive they can control everything. They can’t.

- Corporations that hire non photo people and bring them in this industry. They wouldn’t survive a minute, and they don’t, if they were not working for these companies.

- Companies that have been loosing money for 20 years and are still in business. Why not use the money for useful purposes instead of feeding useless “corpocrates” ( that is an invented word for : Corporate and Bureaucrats).

- Photographer and Agencies that beleive in Say’s Law : production does not automatically create demand. Quantity is not the motor of success. The Photo agency business is not a freakin Lottery.

- Photo consultants that tell you they have the key to success and tell you to take better pictures and charge you for that. Duh !!

- Big Companies threatening photographers if they work for a competing agency.

- Photo Festivals that are just an excuse for someone to cash in some nice sponsorship money and have their hands kissed like a G~d for a week.

- Those endless photo competitions that are really just an excuse for a company to make money.

- Slides shows online that don’t work or are badly done.

- Websites from Big Publishing companies  that say they have no budget for photos.

- People that say ” Well, everyone else has accepted that price”. I really couldn’t care less how dumb other people can be. And, last thing I want to do is be associated with them.

- Photo Associations that rack up as many members as they can so they can get sponsorship money. Yet, they do absolutely nothing to help their members.

- Organizations that try to create standards and end up creating extremely useless and complicated monsters. They never use what they preach on a daily basis , so why would they care?

- Photo Galleries that exhibit the same photographers or photographs over and over again.

- People that beleive that Google will save them.

- Software that are not even compatible with each other.

- Iphone Apps. Enough already. Not everything needs to end up as an Iphone App. It’s just not that cool anymore.

- Geeks that think they know better.

- Exact Image Search websites that return no result for images, although you have seen the image a  hundred times. And they don’t even crawl photo agencies, which could be useful for people looking to license an image.

and finally, I have to stop somewhere, those photographers that pollute our visual space with their crap.

Posted in license, IPTC, idee, Plus, commercial stock, technology, keyword, google, editorial, corbis, finance, PACA, photoshop, slideshow, getty | Print | No Comments »

March 3, 2009 by pmelcher.

“Copyright owners tend to focus on the aspect they see of piracy, which is the lost revenue. They therefore think what drives users to do it is the desire to get something for free. But iTunes shows that people will pay for stuff online, if you make it easy. A significant component of piracy is simply that it offers a better user experience.” From Paul Graham_Why TV Lost_

Al thought written more for music and video, the above quote is true for photography. The next big step is figuring how to monetize the huge demand for visuals while avoiding piracy. No numbers officially exists on how many images are “stolen” either by a simple “copy paste”, “save as” or database hacking.  Agencies, as well as independent photographers will never admit publicly on how many of their images are floating around without being properly licensed.

A few solutions are slowly emerging but they offer more a reaction rather than an offer. Piscout, for example, will help you after the fact as well as Tineye.com. Imagespan, Gumgum, Piccapp, and others to come, offer an option, but not a solution. Most  copyrights owners are still hoping that metadata will save them, forgetting so conveniently that it can be so easily stripped away. Finally, organizations like the dying Plus Coalition are trying to  standardize archaic and complicated options in the ultimate hope to freeze in time antiquated models. None are making licensing easier.

Rather, by proliferating in multiple directions, these companies (who do not own any copyright) confuse and distract the marketplace even more. What we need is to encourage consumption, not add more leashes. And, as such, stop making our images so incredibly difficult and complicated to purchase. The microstock sector, taking cues from the traditional RF sector, has succesfully understood how important it is to empower the customer with a simple, smooth process.

That is the next evolution of our industry.

Posted in idee, copyright, Plus, technology, commercial stock, gumgum, license, IPTC, law, Royalty free, transaction, finance, keyword, prosumer, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 24, 2009 by pmelcher.

You know it’s coming…you are just not sure what to do about it. A few weeks ago, Apple released the new version of their personal DAM called Iphoto. Besides being one of the worst photo organizing application, it came out bundled with a little gadget that allows  it to recognize faces and tag them accordingly.

The technology is not really new. Picassa has offered the same, on line, for quite a while. The principle is rather simple. The computer recognizes where faces are located in a picture and asks you to tag it appropriately. After a few examples, the application takes over and continues automatically based on what it has learned from your input. It will still make some errors, which you can correct, but overall, it will be pretty efficient.

Myheritage.com, a family history website has offered the same technology for a while, with a twist. It tries to match your face with a celebrity and tells you who you look like.

Those are two consumer-oriented usage. What surprises me is that no photo agency search engine has even remotely tried to apply this technology to their work flow. Especially in the editorial world, where 95 % of the searches of people  are made with proper names. A photographer shoots Bill Gates at an event, the image is processed automatically to add his name to the IPTC field and added to the database. What a time saver !!!. Or , you finally find out the name of that woman sitting next to George Clooney at the last Miramax party. You upload her picture with the right info and hop! your whole database is updated in seconds.

Now, lets take this a step further. You just figure out what species that bird is. With the same technology, it can update any and all images with the same bird. Even better, you take a picture and it will scan the internet to find out  what species it is and automatically add it to your images. This could be done for almost anything in your images. On the search side, a user can upload a generic image of a bird for which he has forgotten the species name and the database will return all the images with the same species in it, along with its name.

Currently, photo agencies spend a fortune on key wording. Some even have in house departments that keep on growing, as they process more and more images. Others give their content to be key worded by batteries of  9 to 5 keyworders based in India or other low wage countries. No one really mentions it, but this has become one of the highest added cost of images processing since they have become digital. A whole underground world, with its tight rules and regulations , its specialized software and its priests. It has almost brought key wording, the act of adding words to an image, to a science. Or, at least they would like it to be. They have “structured” vocabulary, words you can or cannot use, “standards” and other super secret sauce that you should respect if you want to be successful. They control a broad range of scary sounding anagrams, like IPTC, XMP, Dublin core, that they spend hours discussing during closed door sessions around the world. The more complicated, the more esoteric, the more people think it is important, if not fundamental.

They usually sit next to the IT guys and exchange complicated sounding words with looks of complicity while the rest of the room looks upon them with complete blindfolded admiration.

But all this is soon going to change. Besides the new steps of auto tagging, image search is coming out of its infancy. You currently also have similar search, color search and exact image search, giving the meaning of an image its rightful place, next to its description.

Why don’t we see any of these more often ? probably because image key wording has generated its own business, and jobs, a bit like Microsoft has created help desk jobs because it crashes all the time. It has grown out of a shortcoming. It plugs in a hole between the photograph and the person looking for it. It has replaced the fame knowledgeable researcher that agencies used to have with a generic obtuse answering machine. Image Key wording has now become an evil growth on the side of the photography business, managed by  librarians who would like you to believe that they are a solution. The amusing part is none actually access you database history to see what words are actually being used by your clients and how successful the results are. For them, and the rest of the key wording industry, if a client can’t find the right image, it is because they are not using the right keyword.

A bit like stock  photo agency editors who decide what image should make it through your system without ever looking at what images are actually published, the key wording industry has absolutely no relations with actual users. Nor do they seemingly care. They believe the users should be keyword friendly, and not the opposite.

Image search is going through a long awaited evolution and is now beginning to offer the proper tools to match a need to an offer and those who will win will be the ones that understand how to apply this technology to better serve their clients.

Posted in idee, technology, commercial stock, celebrity, Search, PACA, CEPIC, keyword, editorial | Print | No Comments »

December 12, 2008 by pmelcher.

It’s all in the way you search. Stock photo agencies, now having reached a point where they are all pretty much offering the same content for the same prices, are desperately trying to make themselves relevant with different search engines. After all, Google’s success is made on search and not content, so why not stock photo agencies ?

Lately, Canadian based Masterfile, recipient of the A21/Superstock legacy and its assets, has just revealed a new “paradigm shift” ( don’t you just hate that overused expression?) , called “endless media”. Surely, exactly what an image buyer wants to see after doing a search is endless results. I think not. When playing around with it, it really looks like a vague combination of Brightqube’s 2 year old mosaic display idea sprinkled with a little bit of Cooliris. No shift here, just a lot of balloon air.

Steve Pidgeon explains to Selling Stock newsletter :

“The name of this toy is Endless Media, and with good reason: the primary search results are displayed as three horizontally scrollable rows of square thumbnails, presenting a seemingly endless amount of options. The style of review is up to the user. The search engine can auto-play results by scrolling and pausing at adjustable time intervals. It also allows a buyer to move back and forth with the help of buttons familiar from early cassette-player days, drag a slider to any point between the first and last screens—or even specify a “go to” position as a percentage of total. Sizes of image thumbnails can also be adjusted based on user preference.

Hovering over any thumbnail produces a small uncropped preview, and clicking on an image is where the real fun begins: Without losing the three rows of primary results, a buyer also sees a large image preview—unwatermarked for registered customers—and a series of similars.

“You did not ask for similar images, but we gave them to you without penalizing you by losing your primary search,” explains McDonald, who stresses the importance of this never-lose-your-place functionality and the ability to work both literally and laterally at the same time.”

mmm. sounds easy and simple: early cassette player, multiple options, scroll right and left, adjustable sizes, lots of similars ..and so on. But what about the core essential result expected from doing a search ? Like, finding the right image quickly and easily? Doesn’t seem like they worked on that.

While we are on the topic of search, two new image search portals have been launched recently. One in the UK, called Imprezzeo, looks for similar based on content. Nothing new here, as other companies, like Idee, have been offering this for many years. But Idee has never offered it as a global portal but rather as a plug in to existing image database.With there latest Tineye offering, they offer even more as you can now locate the exact same image, rather than similar. Not useful for a internal database but very useful for a public search. Imprezzeo seems to tap the same market, that is photo agencies, according to their “about us” page. Funny that they would consider it a segment of the industry to invest in, considering how its about to tank.

Another one, which is a complete surprise, is Hitachi. Yes, the same Hitachi that you might have in your living room. You know that when the Japanese industry gets involved in something, they do it right. Called Gazopa, it is also a similar image search engine ( or a SISE, as we say in the connected world) with a few pluses. It has a browser plug in that allows you to search outside of their site. You can upload or draw the images you are looking for. and finally, it has a ” stream of consciousnesses” features that continue to search for similars of your similars as long as you want it to. Called “Flow”, it is more a gadget than very useful, but still interesting. Still in Beta, this service seems fully geared to the public and not to the photo industry.

Similar searches are still the exception rather than the rule in photo agencies search. No data has been made public on whether it is being used by image buyers  at all. But with all these publicly accessible image search engine using it, it will soon become another tool people will expect. It has the huge benefit on not relying on keywords anymore (those nasty little keywords) and is a more “natural” way to search for images. As usual, the photo industry is lagging way behind. Furthermore, none of these public search engine seem to index existing image database, making the professional offering invisible to casual buyers. The photo  agency industry stubbornness to keep their assets behind closely protected close doors is all to the advantage of Microstock platform who thrive on them. While each traditional agency is busy trying to enhance their local, in house, propritery search engine, they forget that less and less image buyers will come to their website but rather look for global search engines. And thus, they will loose on many sales to come.

Posted in Canada, technology, Piclens, commercial stock, idee, Search, filter, web 2.0, google, keyword, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

July 7, 2008 by pmelcher.

Even in a world of quirky names, content continues to rule. Picapp, the source for free legal images for blogs, has just signed up celebrity news agency Splashnews as a new provider. Here’s the deal : 2 companies, one similar idea. How to license images to the high volume community of bloggers worldwide ( 6 billion , I believe). Also, how to license images without these images ever leaving the server, thus avoiding illegal duplication. ( Orphan work anyone ?)

Historically, Picapp was the first to launch, with a revenue sharing deal that made advertising the only source of revenue. GumGum, not far behind, launches with a similar idea. However, the user here has a choice of adverting or paying a pay per view fee.

But the business model is not enough to grab attention, you need the right content. Again, two strategies : Picapp leverages its existing relationship through Picscout and draws the big guns ( i.e Getty). Gumgum, in order to outsmart them and after looking at the blogosphere, goes for entertainment. After all, the celebrity obsessed blogs are not only the most active, but also the biggest consumers of photos. What would be a celebrity site with no images, right ? They quickly signed Pacific Coast news, Splash news and Starmax. The show can begin. And it did. While Picapp runs around making deals with blog publishers and refine their offering ( ie multi size images, hidden Picguy, etc), GumGum seems to be satisfied with their offering.And it seemed to work.

But Picapp is no dumdum. They just signed Splashnews too, realizing they where the biggest money making content provider of Gumgum. Ouch ! The result will soon be felt. One has vast offering, from sports to paparazzi celeb, while the other seems stuck in the muck. Same technology and very similar business model. Who do you think will win?

At the end, it is always the same result. Technology is not an answer in itself, it is just a pipe. You can have the greatest system in the world, if you do not have the content, you die. Think Betamax or more recently, Blu Ray. Geeks are the worst managers of their own technology as they always, always make the same mistake in believing it can overcome everything.  It can’t.

Posted in technology, gumgum, Pacific coast news, idee, license, transaction, finance, web 2.0, editorial | Print | No Comments »

June 10, 2008 by pmelcher.

We are getting there..slowly.  It is not an easy road, but we are getting closer.  In the last year or so, we have seen more and more image search companies come out and expose themselves. Even the even mightiest, and certainly the worst, Google Image is thinking about changing its algorithm.

The holy grail is, of course, the end of the keyword based search ( aaaargh !). The first baby step we are currently seeing only focuses on face recognition. For two main reasons :

- A face is always a face, a triangle between two eyes and a mouth, and rather easy for a computer to recognize.

- Between celebrities and relatives, when you deal with image search, the majority of people are looking for either friends, relatives, themselves or more pix of celebrities . There is a huge market.

So here goes many worldwide software engineers claiming image search nirvana. At least when looking for people. I have tested a few, recently, all in Beta and none quite there yet.

TinEye: In a league of it own right now as it does much more than just face recognition image search. Probably the most advanced of all,  its limitation is its extreme accuracy. Looking for an image and it will find that image, nothing less, nothing more. Every altered version of it. Great for many, many usages, but a bit limited for those just seeking a similar or inspiration.

Very far away are :

- Polar Rose. Swedish based, it has been full of promises for many years but with disappointing result up to now. Also starting in the face recognition, its algorithm just became clear to me when it recently invited me to Beta test its Plug in. I was expecting a TineEye sort of plug in, but instead, they put me to work. What is up with that ? .

The plug in works like this : every time you are on a web page, it scans every image for a face. It then puts a square around the face and asks you to put the name. As you enter the name, it starts suggesting options. It was always right on the money. At first, I was really impressed, as in ” How does it know ?”. And briefly later on, I recognized the trick. It scan any available text around the image, looks for two words next to each other starting with a capital letter and assumes that should be the name of the person in the pic. All I have to do is confirm. Thus, Polar Rose is currently no more than an elaborate and free version of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Putting the community to work. While there nothing wrong, in principal, with this approach, with all these website these days that ask for my free input, I am close to putting full 24 hours days of work, for free.

Their chances of success, using that approach, is minimal. I, for one, will not become a slave to the machine.

- Picollator : Russian by birth, this new image search also looks for faces. You can even upload a sketch and it will try to match it. I tried with this image :

surprisingly got no result.  So I went for the TinEye favorite, the Mona Lisa:

.

I got this :

Some matching results, some very weird ones.

Face recognition and matching can be a very useful tool for the news and celebrity world as photographers and editors could quickly edit film with proper name spelling by scanning the web for matching results. Especially for those B to D celebrities. It is, at this stage, still very sketchy and not quite ready for the big time.

It is also a good indication of how far we still are from a computer recognizing, properly, everything in an image. Right now, we are only scratching the matching part and even that, has it flaws.

It is also very important to know that all these sites are in Beta, meaning far from claiming 100 % accuracy and should not be dismissed until officially proven ineffective. You can try all of them, for yourself :

Tineye

Polar Rose

Picallotaor

Posted in Canada, technology, idee, celebrity, keyword, web 2.0 | Print | 1 Comment »

May 9, 2008 by pmelcher.

First, I have to admit I have always been a big fan of everything that comes out of the Ideeplex in Toronto. These guys have the best image tracking system I have ever seen, PixId, already used by the top photo agencies in the world to save countless hours in their billing process. They have a visual search that is incomparable and might just be the secret weapon of the Alamy armada. They also have a color search that is the most proficient out there . You can see and play with all of them in their lab section. These guys are doing for photography what Einstein did for physics, making it progress by leaps and bounds. If you are not using one of Idee’s services these days, you  have a big problem.

So when Idee announced the beta version of their image search earlier this week, called TinEye, I could not wait to play with it. Premise is simple: Take an image that you either upload or find on a website and ask Tineye to  seek any place it is published. That would seem simple enough, but Tineye will also find that image, wether its been cropped, resized, re colored, twisted, bended, you name it. Even with major (and we are talking major) alteration, Tineye will find it. Alterations that would make a human eye miss it. Impressive. very impressive.

That image:

brought up this image, among many others:

Because it is still in Beta, the results are not impressive in numbers. They have only indexed half a billion images and are in the process of indexing the rest. Hey, Google was not built in one day either. If you live near Toronto, you probably can see the smoke coming out of the Ideeplex. It’s those server crunching data under the watchful eyes of master genius CTO Paul Bloore. Or could it be from CEO Leila Boujnane head, fuming with impatience because it is not finished yet ?

I played with many different types of images, using the cool Firefox plug in that lets you perform a search without leaving the site you are visiting.Hard to stop and I know I will continue to use it intensively.

So what it is good for ? Well, for one, speaking of Orphan Work, this image search engine that could will find all usage of an image, including, very certainly, the owner of the image.  It is going to much, much harder to claim that an image is orphan with this guy. But it can do much more. Think of all those micro and midstock  photographers who would love to see where their images have been used. Same with those CC happy Flickr members. Pro photographers will be able to keep a watchful eye over their agencies, as well as agencies can keep a watchful eye for unauthorized usage (Picscout, beware ).

There are many other potential for this free image search which suddenly puts google image into the medieval ages. And it will be a pleasure to watch and grow and mature. There is no doubt this will be one of the biggest success of the internet in recent years. Because people are fed up of searching for images with text. It just doesn’t make any sense. This is just the beginning of the end of keywording, the fall of the controlled vocabulary despotism.

Tineye returns exact matches, for the time being, and that is  maybe its most important shortcoming. It will return the same exact image and not similar. But knowing these guys, that will not last long, and the option to return images that look like the image you are using shouldn’t be that far.

If you have a chance, jump on this as soon as you can. They are taking suggestions and I am sure would love to hear your. It is time to make history . ( oh no, I sound like Obama now…)

Either way, these guys have a reputation: If it is not perfect, its not finished. So, do not expect them to open Tineye to the public before every little crumb of image is properly indexed.

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