THE Hitachi is developing an image search service (still in a private beta phase) through similarity, that is, you present an image and it searches for others similar to that. But nothing better to promote a new service than to make an application available for iPhone, right?
GazoPa is the application that brings this service to the iPhone and iPod touch. To start searching, you can take a photo at the moment, choose one from your photo library or even draw, taking advantage of all the multi-touch interactivity that the iPhone provides.
As a video is worth a thousand screenshots, check out how the service promises to work:
Of course, because it is still in beta, the application does not work exactly as shown, at least not for Brazilian images. We subscribe as beta testers and we did some experiments to see how it works.
You have the search options at your disposal, which can be focused on color, layout, shape or even faces. We tried it first with a picture of our flag, but it was based mainly on colors, even changing the settings. Then we tried with a drawing, where the results were a little more satisfactory.
click on the images to enlarge them
Finally, the search for faces. It worked great when finding the same photo as the original, but did not find different photos of the same person, as iPhoto does on the Macintosh. In this case too, Brazilian images do not work very well, certainly due to Hitachi’s limited image bank, which does not yet have many Brazilian examples.
The application is now available for free at App Store (link), but in order to use it you must receive an invitation from the closed beta of the service. Until yesterday they were still accepting new registrations on this page, but I don’t know how long it will last. Try to sign up and try this service for yourself, but it still grows a lot.
