Dual Engine Post
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Written By Reprise Media | June 16, 2006 | Share This
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We’ve got Jux2 on one side, and Riya on the other…let’s get this bird in the air:
So meta Jux2, previously famed as the search engine that went up for sale on eBay (and eventually sold for a little over a hundred grand), has made some changes, writes Loren Baker.
A meta engine that allows users to compare results from major search sources side-by-side, Jux2 has just incorporated MSN’s results in addition to Google’s and Yahoo!’s; tabs allow you to swiftly switch between results from the Big 3, or see an amalgam of “best” results from all three on one page, which notes the original engine (and placement) of each listing. Jux2 has also introduced a Firefox extension for its browser toolbar, which allows users to employ Jux2 search features without schlepping all the way over to the site.
“Shake it like a polaroid picture” Riiiiyaaaah…ahem. Start again. Riya’s big draw as a personal photo search site is its very cool facial recognition features; users can upload photos to the site, train Riya to recognize a specific person (say, their grandma) by face, then set it to work adding tags to every photo in their collection in which grandma appears. Now Riya’s taking its bag of tricks and setting it loose on the whole internet.
Barry Schwartz points to a SiliconBeat story that says Riya will soon be a ‘visual’ search engine. After noticing that its users were increasingly trying to use the site to search the web rather than their own pic collections, Riya’s founders decided to head in that direction. The site’s facial recognition tech will be employed to search images for similarities beyond just faces. For instance, you could use it to find online stores selling a product you’re after (or one with similar shape, color, and texture), or even have it help you find a date - “Search for an image of a hot blonde, and Riya will pull up similar looking blondes at Match.com.” So when will the new-look Riya be unleashed? Look for it to be able to crawl the whole web in about three months.
Topics: Search: Image, Search: News |