Putting search engines in the picture

WHY TYPE in a search query when you can snap it? That’s the question Plink, a new Irish company, is hoping to answer. Most search engines are text-based and focus on generating responses to a word or phrase, but Plink has just launched a search engine that works using just images.

Users can take a photo of a painting, a book, or a DVD cover and enter the image into Plink. It will then provide links to responses providing more details on the artist, reviews and, for books and the like, an option to purchase. Co-founder Mark Cummins says the systems are just getting to the point of maturity where you can search millions of images in a fraction of a second. “You can take a photo that is upside-down with someone’s hand obscuring part of it and even if it’s a bit blurred it can be identified,” he says

Cummins believes the growth in iPhones and the like means an increasing number of people are walking around with “essentially cameras attached to internet-enabled computers”.

“You have this compelling mobile web experience just at the same time as computer vision technology is maturing. The two together make this new type of search engine possible.”

The technology was developed by Oxford University PhD students Cummins and James Philbin.

Cummins says there is decades of research behind the concept and when the pair were nearing the end of their studies, the commercial possibilities for the technology started to become clear.

“We were working on this technology and we saw there were really interesting commercial things that you could start to do with it.” He adds that the barriers to entry are quite high because there are very few people who are deeply into this technology.

Plink has got support from Enterprise Ireland and was a runner up in the iQ Content competition for start-ups. It was also a finalist in the Mini Seedcamp in London in April. The company expects to take on its first angel investor soon.

Cummins intends to distribute the software for free through Apple Apps with the revenue model based on advertising. On September 1st Plink entered the Google Android developer programme with a visual search engine for visual art images.