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.

Posted in idee, Canada, technology, copyright, license, editorial, web 2.0, Search, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

April 14, 2008 by pmelcher.

 Ever since I wrote the piece “orphan work is good for you”, I have been slammed with emails which all pretty much revolved around the same issue : Orphan work bill is a open door for Copyright Infringement and the legalization of free usage.

First and foremost, I keep on refering my readers to a very concise and readable link created by the Copyright Office . In no way do they propose or would facilitate free usage. It is not their intend. It is also quite admirable that they have, and will continue to hold hearings  to listen to all and everyones concerns.

But the most important, to me, is to see that Canada has had a Orphan Work bill in effect since 2005. Quite effective, it requires the potential user of an Orphan image, after proving its good faith in researching the copyright owner,  to be granted a license by the Copyright office. It has happened  only 19 since  then. Granted, Canada is not as big as the United States, but 19 is almost not worth a second look.

Furthermore, the Canadian law leaves 5 years after the license has been granted for the owner to retrieve his/her license. It is still early to see if this provision has ever been used by anyone.

The copyright office, and any all serious image licensor know very well that technology can be a very serious ally in copyright protection. Regardless of any petition and whining, the bill WILL pass.

As said before, It will be a great  incentive for everyone to respect metadata more seriously  and for the photo industry to finally grow up.

Posted in idee, Canada, focus, technology, copyright, license, web 2.0, keyword, IPTC, law | Print | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by pmelcher.

We have to take responsibility for our actions and our businesses. Once again, shields are raised and emotions are running high. The Orphan work bill has been resurrected.

In a nutshell, if passed, the Orphan Work bill would allow anyone to use a photograph, for free, after proving that a reasonable effort was made to find the copyright owner. In an earlier post, I had suggested that instead of making it free, those orphan images should be licensed properly and the money send to a central organisation that would use those funds to continue looking for the copyright owner.

At least, that way, people would continue to know that any image has to be licensed properly. Regardles of this proposition, this bill would be a good bill. For two main reasons:

- It would finally force photographers and agencies to properly credit their images with well filled IPTC fields. There are thousands of paying or free tools out there that allows anyone to enter its information. There is absolutely no reason why people continue to ignore it. Furthermore, a lot of agency website currently cut down the size of an image to display them as thumbnails, erasing all IPTC data in the process and thus creating an Orphan work. This has to stop. As content creators, artist, it is their duty to secure the information on copyright, not the buyers.

With the risk of having their images used for free, maybe, just maybe, they will pay more attention.

- It will create new technologies : there will be a whole new market to help find image copyright owner. an image search tool, for example, where you could upload a copy of the photograph you have in your possession and it will find all other usage of the same image, leading you hopefully to its legal owner.

Furthermore, other technologies will soon come available, like embedded watermarks or automated tagging directly build in the camera. It already exist in many pro cameras, but once again, no one really uses it.

It is a bit sad that this industry needs a kick to take seriously the matter of image ownership. But, fortunately, it will happen if the Orphan Works bill passes and that, my dear friends, would be a great thing.

Posted in idee, focus, technology, copyright, license, keyword, IPTC, Search, google | Print | 1 Comment »

February 28, 2008 by pmelcher.

“my first (and probably my last, unless you tell me it is a good idea) guest post :”

How did it start?Was it the 1890’s ?Photographers took pictures, pushed the edge of the envelope but could not do everything, they needed agents.In the meantime copyright came along to try and stop the exploitation of artists, there where always those with money willing to exploit the talents of an impoverished artist.Come the 1950’sAgents came along and entered into a partnership with the photographers, 50/50 or whatever, photographers owned the copyright, agents sold and kept the collections in hard chemical form, their business grew in the center of cities, large amounts of real estate holding pictures.

Pictures where sold for 1st rights, 2nd rights, 3rd rights and so on, the sellers had a firm grip on the marketplace.

Photographers if they where good made money in editorial, rights managed, it was a financial meritocracy, the best made the most. Art and creativity was king.

Agencies like Sygma, Sipa, Magnum, Rex, and stock agencies like Tony Stone all flourished, not by employing photographers but entering into partnerships with photographers.

20 years went buy and they became big business.

It’s the 1990’s along came digital, Getty and Corbis.

Digital, binary code was an astonishing revolution allowing millions of images to be stored in a box the size of a car instead of a 10 story building, on top of that images could be sent thousands on miles in a few seconds and reconstructed to the original quality thanks to jpeg compression, opportunity was knocking and along came the bankers and big business.

Getty and Corbis knew with a few million spent wisely they could dominate the industry, they started their acquisitions

Most of the agencies sold out but this was the first knife in the back for the photographers, the content creators, whilst an agency owner pocketed the $ 20 million from Corbis the photographer got nothing and in Sygmas case an assumption by Corbis that they owned the archive!!! I think the lawsuits are still continuing. What did I last hear Microsoft has $ 40 billion dollars in cash, what chance does a poor photographer stand?

Getty, owned by bankers saw an opportunity for consolidation and cost saving, they also thought “ Art” could be created on a 9-5 hour day, a salary and no incentive. They went ahead and spent $ 500,000 million dollars acquiring photo agencies.

Bill Gates, he initially just wanted art on his walls digitally, constantly changing to fit his mood, this was when big screen plasmas cost $ 30,000

These where tough times for artists, creative photographers who ideas where stolen, their percentages crushed, financial ruin approaching.

The agencies new owners drove hard bargains and percentages to the photographers, if you did not sign, get lost, plenty to fill the departing artists shoes, plenty of styles to copy.

A typical business model bulk sold content on monthly deals, sending thousands of pictures a day to clients, 1st rights, 2nd rights, 3rd rights became a thing of the past, your pictures where likely to be bundled at a $ 100,000 deal a month for 200,000 images used, you do the math !

By 2000 the creative photographer had been destroyed, art had become sterile, its becoming obvious bankers are not good for art!!!

Mix with this through the late 90’s early 2000 the growth of Google, a search engine with a bland front end. What the hell was this and it was free!!!

By 2004 we knew what Google was, an advertising agency who had managed to optimize the Internet and its revenue through click through revenues and who was being screwed the most in this, as if in a double whammy, creative photographers and newspapers, in fact anyone who published!!!

Those bulk all you can eat deals really paid of for Google with free rights in perpetuity as they displayed the web pages of most of the publications in the World, blatantly using fantastic images for free to drive click through revenue to their advertisers. The poor old content creator ( photographer) got nothing

Catching onto what was happening the media industry jumped on the Google band wagon and followed Getty’s lead and obtained pictures under tough contracts ,  New York Times, Tribune Group, Associated Newspaper, News International and almost every publishing group in the World started their own web sites, using pictures for peanuts whilst lamenting, “ We are loosing Money” they continued to make money off pictures through CPMs, “ accidentally” using pictures without paying  or sometimes purchased for ridiculously low fees.

Then came the blogs who where inspired by Googles claim to free usage under the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and other internet users of pictures, all claiming they where making no money, whilst the poor old photographer where having to spend money to apparently make nothing
Then came blogs and other internet users of pictures, all claiming they where making no money, whilst the poor old photographer where having to spend money to apparently make nothing.

In 2007 the World implodes, what happened to the American Dream ?

In 2008 when Getty Images sells for $ 2.4 billion with a failing business model they still do not understand what they did and their errors. Quite simply they where conducting business using digital with analog business models, they distributed full resolution digital images on a daily basis to hundreds of users, millions of asset files that could be stolen and used by everyone for free, whilst those users made millions on click through advertising revenue in perpetuity.

It all seemed hopeless and then along came GumGum, and they have suggested a solution that could get the creators back in financial control of their lives and the industry back on a firm foothold.

For in the end it’s the creators of new art that drives the marketplace but the industry must change the way it markets images in this maturing digital age. The artists have to be paid and then the flow of great marketable images will continue and big business through shared revenue will make even more money and survive.

And I suspect Bill Gates will still be rich!!!!

Paul Harris

Pacific Coast News
Celebrity Home Photos
Pacific Coast News Video
United States Head Office
BWP Media USA Incorporated

Posted in Midstock, license, multimedia, Search, newspaper, copyright, idee, Pacific coast news, gumgum, technology, magazine, keyword, google, editorial, law, news, corbis, finance, PACA, web 2.0, photojournalism, wire service, CEPIC, getty | Print | No Comments »

December 18, 2007 by pmelcher.

From Canada, again. Seems like every thing good or innovative in photography these days is coming from Canada (istockphoto, Veer, Idee, Zymmetrical, ….) . The TV channel and website CBC ( Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ) has posted an interview of uber-humanitarian and extremely talented photographer Marcus Bleadsale.

You can, and you should ( it’s an order ),  view it here:

Marcus, for those who might not know, is the new member of the VII photo agency and recipient of many, many awards. However, as much as he appreciates the attention of his peers,  he would much rather people do something about the situation he photographs. In a way, he would love being out of a job.

I had written an entry about Marcus a while back.

Via Mediastorm’s blog ( another site you have to visit)

Posted in idee, magazine, Canada, mediastorm, multimedia, editorial, photojournalism, news | Print | No Comments »

December 4, 2007 by pmelcher.

Social bookmarking website Digg.com has just launched, last night, an addition to their service. From now on, registered users will be able to submit images. For those unfamiliar with Digg, let me explain. You see an article you like, you submitt to Digg. If others like it, they also “Digg” it. The more Diggs, the more the article reaches the top. On the other side, a lot of people will go to Digg.com and read the most popular article.

What is very interesting here, is that it is now possible with images, creating the first social bookmarking of images. Why is this relevant to our industry ? Digg is a highly popular website, at least in the USA. It has a huge amount of traffic. This will allow us to see what images are the most popular. But with a twist.

The images that will appear to the top will be the images that most people find interesting to share, not to be confused with the ones they like the most. It is more likely that we will see more strange, funny, exotic images than groundbreaking photojournalism . But nevertheless, for advertisers looking to find the next viral marketing campaign, or publishers, seeking to populate their pages with eye grabbing content, it will certainly be a source of inspiration. For photographers too, it could become a source of inspiration.

Furthermore, it will be much different than a Flickr or other photo file sharing platform as the majority of voters will be not interested in photography. Finally, it will also be fascinating to see how many photo agencies, including the microstocks, will add the “digg” buttons under every single of their image.

With the crest of the web interaction at its peak, it will be a very compelling destination to monitor regularly for anyone curious about the relationship of photography and its users.

On a parallel note, and the second newsworthy item, is that Digg selected Idee Inc technology to prevent having duplicates. Thanks to Idee, if people vote for the same image but seen on different sites, it will add up instead of duplicating. A confirmation that the company has a real dedication to its core competence and not venturing into doubtful activities.

you can see Digg Images here Be prepare to see a lot of images of Cats and Dogs…

Idee Inc new website can be seen here. Check out their lab. very cool stuff

Posted in digg, idee, Search, flickr, news, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | No Comments »