1
|
As I reported earlier this morning, [Like.com][1] is a new shopping site based around an image search engine. Like's image search lets you browse and search by visual similarity rather than textual descriptions. [Riya][2], the folks behind Like, already have an image recognition search engine that has seen limited success, but the company has shift focus slightly with Like.
At the moment Like focuses on shopping searches and you can't upload an image, rather you start out with a text search and then Like gives you a choice of images based on your search terms. You can also browse by celebrity photos and find products similar to those that Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and others are wearing in the pictures.
The idea is that if you find an item you like in a photograph, for example, a particular watch, pair of shoes, handbag or jewelry, Like will find related products by examining the actual image. Like.com then presents a link to purchase the item from Amazon an other online retailers.
I'm probably not the target market for finding shopping results based on celebrity photos, but the search results themselves are pretty impressive. And you can specify that like match against various criteria including, color texture and shape. So if you see a photo on the site of Paris Hilton in red shoes, but you decide you'd like to see them in black, just select black from the color picker and Like narrows your search. You can also weight your criteria's importance using sliders at the top of each results page. This way you can search by color, but emphasis results based on shape.
Because the site is currently limited to images already in its database, the experience is somewhat less than spectacular, but Like claims to be launching an image upload feature in the next few months. Although Like claims to be in alpha status, I had no problems using the site and I'm looking forward to using like with uploaded images wherever that feature becomes available.
[1]: http://www.like.com/ "Like.com"
[2]: http://riya.com/ "Riya.com"
|
