déjà vu

When I was a kid, I could only think of computers through sci-fi tv serials on DD. Computers were portrayed as a person with all great wisdom. Whatever you ask it has all the answer.

Now when I think back, I wonder how simple interface we talk about but I could hardly see any around.

Last night a friend referred me a site Ikea.ca . There was a simple interface for automated chat assistant program "Anna". A simple Eliza like chat program, with a twist. What ever you talk about related to ikea, the other pages is automatically redirects it to that page. (Reminds me of our AI course assignment of GoSSIP, a similar chat bot for IIT-Madras with different learning modes but didn't redirect the user to those pages.)

I'm not sure how well "Anna" is programmed in comparison with ALICE or other similar program but I liked the way the technology has been used for better use.

"Anna" animation looks very primitive, I found a better animation demo at haptek.com

Later I saw a " 2D to 3D image transformation" demo from a single image done by research team in CMU.

There are good enough "Speech to text" technologies available.

I just had a wild dream, what if you combine all these and make a single powerful application.

• Speech-to-text
• Search(I'm feeling lucky ;-) )
• answer the question
• redirect user to relevant places
• Emote as per user interaction
• Talk 2 user (text to speech)

I guess every kid in this world would like to create his own skin(interface) depending on whom he thinks knows everything.

I Like it

Riya.com, a photo search company, has launched a new image search engine called Like.com

Riya.com have been putting lots of effort in photo search. I was just wondering how will they position themselves when they said "We aren't so much about searching for images as much as we are about searching with images."

With photo search I could visualize some of its applications in genealogy, social networking, dating and matrimonial sites. Photo search application could also be used by police and other similar organization.

There are many other image search engines but they all search on meta information attached with the image. Accuracy of the result depends how well that information is tagged. Like.com adds another dimension of image search which is a true example of searching with images.

As of now this is just limited to jewelery, handbags, shoes and watches search but as and when this expands to another categories this could be another mode of CPA based advertising.

I like their Riya's strategic move in the image search world. Very good work done.