Idee Inc. of Toronto, Canada, has recently received the Canadian e-Content Award in the Best Innovative Application Category.
Idée Inc is the developer of Espion, a visual search application that allows users to search for images based on image similarity provided by the image attributes (color, shape, texture, luminosity, complexity, objects, regions etc). Espion provides the capability to search quickly and intuitively through very large image collections for visually similar images.
Regarding Espion Idee partners with the content management systems Cumulus by Canto, Fotoware and - since last autumn - with Wonderfile, where is serves a the first commercial implementation of visual search (called “SimSearch “) for a stock photography website. The word is out on the street that there will new implementations at other stock photography sites this year.
After the long and sometimes painful history of visual search (last paragraphs of the text) and different companies in the last five years one might cautiously predict that the technology provided by Idee might become the industrial standard for the stock photography business, both in Royalty Free and Rights Managed/Protected.
One thing is of course missing: a serious scientific study (published “publicly”) how photo agencies and portals really benefit from visual search technology in terms of money. There is however a study by Forrester Research/Paul Sonderegger (“Grading Search Platform Hopefuls”), December 2002). A newer study by Forrester Research is out, only a few weeks old, but it´s not yet on my desk so I can´t say a word.
It is expected that in two or three years this technology will be a built-in feature of most image database applications. The technology can also serve for video web sites, trademark management and consumer photo sites (the latter is FMPOV where the real money comes in).
Idee has presented the visual search technology at the 2003 8th International Conference of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) and soon at the 2004 Meeting of the Coordination of European Picture Agencies (CEPIC).
