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November 13, 2006
Euro Rivals For Riya -> Pixsta and Polar Rose
Updated with Comment from Alexander Straub, who is a co-founder of Pixsta and an investor in Truphone, see end of this post.
At the a:c euro we like visual search, image search, anything to do with computer graphics, actually. Startups in these categories have the goods - like smart algorithms and brainy founders (in other words: Intellectual Property/High Barriers To Entry), and there just might be some new markets and applications emerging for these technologies.
We came across Pixsta this morning via Paul Jozefak's blog, which led us to Polar Rose. Pixsta is based in London, and Polar Rose, out of Malmo, Sweden. Both are developing image search products. 
Pixsta, which has a demo site, is looking to apply its technology to online shopping, similar to the idea behind Like.com (an application launched this week from US-based Riya). Polar Rose, which is soon to launch in beta, is about finding photos of people and its commercial plans are not public.
These technologies can be applied to a number of businesses areas, online retailing as suggested above, but we guess they could also be used in search tools for developers of logos and corporate identity art, and possibly in search engines for stock photo and graphic art vendors.
Pixsta Helps Shoppers Find Similar Items
On Pixsta's demo site, Chez Imelda, we decided to look for some orange sandals and found a selection without having to enter a single search word. It delivered up the results without a click through, showing where to buy the new footwear.
Here's how pixsta describes its software.
"Pixsta software reaches beyond the current text-based approach to search by automatically extracting visual content from images. we can organise large image collections into hyperlinked networks of visual similarity, so that users can browse the network to find images that come close to what they want, and also spark off new searches."
Our only criticism is the name of the company - maybe we're suffering from startup overload, but we find it hard to remember and the spelling tripped us up in our search for info on the company.
Polar Rose's commercial intentions are not public. Right now it is aiming to find out what people do with the application when it launches in a beta pilot. We couldn't try it but got some screenshots. Its search engine plugs into your browser, finds the faces in a photo, asks the user to confirm, or select the face to be matched, and then seeks similar faces on the web or locally.
Polar Rose Finds The Faces
Asks You To Select And Label The Image To Search For
And Serves Up The Resuls With Some Information From Other Users
Alexander Straub of Straub Ventures and a co-founder of Pixsta writes in:
Just to point out you can click from the image on www.chezImelda.com to the retailers site. When above the button with a mouse two little logo’s appear, one to drag and drop the image into a depository (just if you like it) or click to the retailers landing page.
Example of ChezImelda: You are looking for Crocs (the one Brad Pit wears – click on the orange sandal, you get an orange crocs, click on the crocs and half of the page is filled with the crocs in different shapes and colours. We basically offer 89 x 10 to the power of 10 = 89 trillion ways of shopping for 89,000 shoes. We need 89 trillion calculations to come off with the relative matrix of shoes all linked together by visual clues.
Update: VentureBeat has a thoughtful review of Like.com, and mentions Pixsta too.
Read - Visual Search Good For Shopping (venturebeat)
Read - Do I Really Like It (Paul Jozefak blog)
Read - Science Fiction News (Technovelgy)
Pixsta - visual browsing (Heiko's Blog)
Read - Suchmaschine erkennt Gesichter (DiePresse)
Read - Like.com Image Search Enging Launched (e-consultancy)
Posted on November 13, 2006 04:40 AM | Posted to Digital imaging | Early stage | Specialized Software | Permalink
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