Background
Image recognition has been attracting lot of R&D efforts since late nineties and biggies like Google, Microsoft and Nokia etc are pouring millions into the research. Google has been focusing on non text objects since 2000; one would remember about patent filed by Larry Page in 2004 titled “Method for searching media“. They bought Neven Vision in 2006, which was into “next generation” face and object recognition technologies, and hence got handful patents too  which were owned by Neven Vision. Google also brought Transformics in 2006 which enabled it to index the pages its Google crawlers were not able to – basically the unstructured information. Google then integrated this technology with its homegrown Picasa, and launched Face detection, though in primitive form, in 2008. With launch of Android phone, Google got the base on which it could bring out its future technologies and capture the feedback in legal and cost effective way. And a look into Google Labs would introduce this next generation image recognition application – Google Goggle.

Google Goggles was developed for use on Google’s Android operating systems for mobile devices. While currently only available in a beta version for Android phones, Google has announced it plans on making the software capable of running on other platforms, notably the Apple iPhone and Blackberry devices. See the video below to get the gist of Google Goggles-

Competition

IBM (Direct competition)
IBM came up with SAPIR (Search in Audio-Visual Content Using Peer-to-peer Information Retrieval) in 2009 which analyzes photos, sound files and even video queries. It has created its database by extracting data from Flickr’s ginormous archive and index features such as color structure, color layout, shape edges and texture. It also allows one to combine text with media to refine down the search.
Demo: Click here for YouTube demo video

Nokia (Can be a direct competition)
Nokia announced its Point and Find app for its handsets in April 2009, which can recognize barcodes and cinema posters.  The software uses the phone’s camera, internet access and GPS to call up pre-programmed tags; that can then bring up local movie times, the ability to book tickets, and – eventually – price comparisons.
Demo: http://pointandfind.nokia.com

Microsoft (Indirect competition)
Microsoft has not come up with something as sensational in image detection as examples listed above as they have been focusing more on gesture recognition and object recognition. I have already blogged about Microsoft Surface, read the post at http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2009/12/microsoft_surface. You will also hear about the project Natal which is being used to develop XBox‘s next version to challenge Wii. As I mentioned earlier, focus of Microsoft is in enterprise and commercial sector rather than consumer side.

Like.com (from Riya.com, the start-up which introduced the concept of face recognition in personal photos)
Riya was the first website to introduce the feature of tagging friends in photo using face recognition. As Google and Microsoft made the inroads over here, Riya CEO Munjal Shah decided to become niche player by venturing into Like.com. Like.com is image search and takes images and text as inputs which only IBM has been able to replicate as of now. Say a user likes the watch that Megan Fox wore in some party then user can use it as an image query and Like.com will return results showing watches that look very similar. Right now it supports only shoes, jewelry, hand bags and clothing but it plans to expand over time to include other categories.

]]> http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2010/02/fictional-goggles-turn-realistic/feed/ 0 http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2009/12/microsoft_surface/ http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/2009/12/microsoft_surface/#comments Sat, 26 Dec 2009 03:06:31 +0000 Jas http://www.jasginder.com/bizblog/?p=193 If you have seen the last earnings presentation of Microsoft, you would have seen the biggest optimistic line in that presentation – strong product pipeline. We will see in couple of posts under this series – Emerging Technologies that in which all baskets is Microsoft putting its eggs. One such strong market is the (multi) touch based devices which has been betting on gesture recognition technology. And Microsoft is betting its next few devices, including XBox, on gesture and speech recognition. One such technology which Microsoft announced in 2008 is Surface. Codenamed Milan, Microsoft Surface is a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user(s) to manipulate digital content by the use of gesture recognition and has ability to interact with living as well as non living entities.

To keep things geekly simple, Microsoft Surface is a surface computing platform (where GUI is intuitively placed on a touch-sensitive screen and user interacts directly with it) that responds to natural hand gestures and real world objects. It has a 360-degree user interface, with a projector underneath the surface which projects an image onto its underside, while cameras  record reflections of infrared light from objects and human fingertips on the surface. The surface is capable of object recognition, object/finger orientation recognition and tracking, and is multi-touch and is multi-user. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving placed objects. This paradigm of interaction with computers is known as a natural user interface (NUI).

Enough of geekness, lets see what it can do. Surface lets you literally grab digital content with one’s hands and move information with simple gestures and touches, something which was revolutionized by Apple’s iPhone. Surface also sees and interacts with any object placed on the screen, allowing one to move information between devices or adding or accessing the information on those objects. Say one wants to order a hot cappuccino from 20 odd favors offered by a cafe chain, one can choose between the options using Surface, see calorie or ingredient information as one would see in internet, then place a customized order. Once the order arrives, Surface can understand when waiter places Coffee on it. Now you may want to leisure your time away, creating your play-list of your favorite songs on Surface, and browsing through the historic details of how coffee is made, see the videos of plantations from where your Coffee beans were plucked etc. Or say you just had a trip to Himalayas and want to share your images from camera to the Smartphone you are carrying. All you need to do is place compatible camera and phone on the Surface and it will recognize them giving you an options menu, you can then select to transfer the images to your phone without even touching any of these two, just by placing them on Surface! To be frank, this is one technology product which is still looking for the areas where it can be applied to, opportunities are endless but commercial viability and idea limitation are to play the devil’s advocate. Click here to see the sample applications which Microsoft showcases on its Surface website.

The idea of surface came when Microsoft in 2002 undertook a project to ensure that the company expands its role as a major player in the consumer market by creating, developing and marketing a new software platform. Microsoft hired Cheskin, a …., for ideation and to generate additional concepts. Each member was then issued pretend venture capital dollars to fund the concepts given by Cheskin that most appealed to them. This “VC investor” exercise had each team have only 10 minutes to pitch their concept to “potential investors.” PlayTable (now Surface) was the clear winner.

Microsoft is mainly looking at B2C market for acceptance of this product, hence is all set to woo businesses, and is creating enough noise about the product so as to increase the consumer acceptability once installations are done by businesses. As of now Microsoft has entered into partnerships with Harrah, Starwood Hotels, T-Mobile and International Games Technology (which produces Microsoft games).  T-Mobile is planning to use Surface at its sales terminals. Surface will recognize a phone placed on the tabletop and provide the phone’s characteristics and a price list. Customers will be able to drag icons that represent parts of a service plan onto the phone and place an order for purchase. Starwood explores the possibilities of using the computers for photo sharing, music play-list browsing, food and beverage ordering, games and game-related activities, and as a ‘virtual concierge’. Harrah’s wants to use the Surface tables to let people access maps of its different properties, find out the details about events and venues, as well as create their personal itineraries.

The consumer version of the product is expected to come in 2015, in case the product picks up. So lets see what is in store for Microsoft Surface.

The main problem an emerging technology faces is the tough task of making followers out of people who sample it. If an early adopter finds the technology useless or lacking,then the technology has lost a string of customers already from that one single person. And even if the technology appeals with Early adopters, the visionaries will pass the judgment on whether the technology can be utilized fully (see Product Life Cycle diagram below). Hence the crucial area called Chasm, which is the make or break phase for a technology. Emerging technology markets often stall when they reach this phase. It is too late to attract new Visionaries , who are not interested because they can’t be the first to adopt the technology, and too early to attract Pragmatists, who are too risk averse to invest in solutions from anyone but established market leaders that have been referred by a trusted source. (Pragmatists invest in solutions, not technology, and consider Visionaries to be risk takers. Therefore, they are not inclined to consider them trusted references.)

I shall discuss the technologies which are yet to pass through the Chasm phase.

The first technology that I will be blogging about is Microsoft Surface.