- We love hackathons! Let’s go to HackTO! Join us.
We love hackathons at the TinEye HQ and this Saturday we will be participating in HackTO. HackTO is organized by HackDays. And HackDays = hack events across Canada. This weekend HackDays lands in Toronto with 10 API and a 100 attendees! Did you know that Toronto is the 4th best city in the world to get your startup off the ground? It is!
Why such love for hackathons? Because we can see that our entire tech and startup community benefits when awesome developers (and people) get together to hack, build and tinker. If you have not joined us at any of our hackathons, it is time to remedy that.
The idea behind HackTO is simple: a single day hackathon where developers build an application using a set of provided APIs and any other API they would like to use. Completed applications get a chance to compete for awesome prizes.
This time around, there are 10 APIs to select from including our MobileEngine and MulticolorEngine. You may already know the MulticolorEngine as Piximilar. We are launching a set of TinEye APIs in the coming weeks and of course rebranding all current APIs. So stay tuned for our next announcements and get a preview at HackTO. In the meantime:
MulticolorEngine
This is the API that allows you to integrate multicolor searching for your own image database or extract colors from images in your database.
MulticolorEngine searches an image collection using one or more colors. We will be providing a two APIs for the MulticolorEngine:
- A read-only API pre-populated and loaded with 3 million Creative Commons images. You will not be able to add or delete images from this collection.
- A blank r/w API that you can load up with any images you like.
To get a feel for the capabilities of the MulticolorEngine, visit the Idée lab.
MulticolorEngine is a REST API with responses delivered in JSON or XML format. The main methods are:
- color_search: Used to perform a color searches against the collection and return any matches with scores. You can specify up to 5 colours with weights in RGB or hex format.
- extract_colors: Given an image, extract up to 10 colours and their dominance.
- extract_collection_colors: extract information about what colours exist within your whole collection, or a subset of it
- add: Used to populate your image collection.
- delete: Delete images from your collection.
MulticolorEngine also supports full meta-data searching but we’re recommending you not to get into this unless you really want to – it is still in beta!
The second API is our MobileEngine
MobileEngine uses mobile variants of the same algorithms that power TinEye. MobileEngine is designed to find a match for mobile phone picture in a collection of original/target images. It can find duplicate and altered versions of images using fingerprint based searching algorithms. It can find images that have been cropped, resized, rotated, flipped, obscured, blurred etc. Some examples of use are to match a book cover to a collection of covers. Same with CDs & DVDs, stamps, currency etc. It works with rigid flat objects but not 3D soft objects like clothing, fruit, or family pets!
The MobileEngine API can be integrated with any mobile application. For HackTO this API image collections is not pre-populated which means that if you want to develop and launch a mobile image search application integrated with this API, you will need to create a database of images for your search. The TinEye team and their documentation can assist you with that prior to the start of HackTO. Get in touch.
MobileEngine is a REST API with responses delivered in JSON or XML format. Each operation is completely atomic, meaning that given a request, other requests will wait for the first request to complete before they are processed. All responses from the API will have these keys:
- status: indicates the status of the request, can be one of ok, warn, fail
- method: the method that was called
- result: list of results for the method
- error: list of errors from the API
The main methods for MobileEngine are:
- add: Used to populate your collection. There is one shared collection for everyone to use, so please use a prefix for your image names if you want to make sure that they will not be overwritten.
- search: Used to search against your collection and returns matches. Optional search parameters are min score, max number of matches and horizontal flip.
- delete: Delete images from your collection by passing a filename.
Full documentation for the APIs will be provided at the start of HackTO just to keep things interesting :)
The full HackTO schedule is now online. And if the awesome TinEye APIs are not enough of a reason to get you to HackTO, how about the prizes:
- First prize: $2,000 (cash)
- Second prize: $1,500
- Third prize: $500
Good luck!
- TinEye Updates
It has been a busy week at the TinEye HQ: have you seen our latest release? The TinEye Imagemaps! Go ahead and get your images index, we are currently giving priority to large stock photography and creative commons archives but we appreciate your feedback, so give it a try. We added 12 million images to the TinEye index today and also updated the TinEye Android release. This TinEye Android release 1.2 includes a bug fix for the Samsung Galaxy S. Happy Friday TinEye fans!
- TinEye Android
TinEye fans: we released an update to our TinEye Android App. We first want to thank you all for the great feedback you have been sending our way. Much appreciated since we don’t have access to all the potential handsets to possibly test on. So we have heard that our app works on the following devices if you have one of these, give it a try and let us know:
- HTC Desire HD 2.2.1
- HTC Desire 2.2
- HTC Nexus One 2.2-2.3.4
- HTC Evo v2.1-update and 2.2
- LG GT540 CyanogenMod7
- Milestone CyanogenMod7 2.3.3
- Motorola Droid 2.3.3
This latest 1.1 version includes a bug fix where the photo taken with a phone camera was uploaded to TinEye in landscape mode instead of portrait mode in some phones.
As always we would love to hear from you! Say hi!
[Photograph by Paul Downey]
- TinEye Android Beta!
I am sure that if you are like us, you have been dreaming of a TinEye android application for quite some time now. Our beta release today won’t really help you unless – like us – you are a Nexus One user! If you are, well, rejoice: the TinEye Android Beta is here. It is a rough beta as we are just getting it out to do some testing. It is not ready for prime time. It may or may not work. It may or may not crash your phone. But when it works, well… it is magic. We actually just built it for ourselves but we don’t mind sharing.
Have you ever run across a photograph in a magazine, on a poster or on those giant advertising billboards at the airport and wondered where it came from? or who shot it? Now you can simply whip out your Nexus One, snap a photo and get your TinEye results (if we have them!).
So what you need to know:
TinEye Android Beta searches the current TinEye index when you perform a search. There are a number of things you should be aware of:
- Do not install it if you are using a Samsung Galaxy S! It will hard crash your device and you will need to remove your battery to restart it.
- It does not work well with rotated images. You need to take your photograph in portrait mode and avoid rotations/skewed shots.
- It only works with Android v2.1 and later. And has only been tested on the HTC Nexus One running Android v2.3.3 and the HTC Evo running Android v2.1-update1 and v2.2.
How to install the TinEye Android Beta:
- On your phone go to Settings > Applications.
- Enable “Unknown Sources” This is required because during the beta, the app is not being installed from the Android Market Place.
- Install TinEye for Android
- Go to the browser downloads, either from the Android pull down menu or by going to the phone browser menu > more > downloads, and click on TinEye.apk to install the app
- After the app is installed, be sure to disable Unknown Sources.
We would appreciate your feedback so that we can work on the next release. So please let us know of any bugs or drop us a line to send us some hugs! We are already working on a number of improvements including:
- Options to use the camera zoom and flash
- The option to upload an image from your phone image gallery
- The option to log into your TinEye account from the app
- Using the camera in landscape mode.
To uninstall the app:
- Go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > TinEye
- Choose Force Stop if the button is enabled
- Choose Uninstall
Enjoy!
UPDATE: MAY 31/2011. Thanks TinEye fans for your testing and feedback. Much appreciated. We now have a new release Version 1.1 which includes a bug fix where the photo taken with a phone camera was uploaded to TinEye in landscape mode instead of portrait mode in some phones. This release also works on the following devices:
- HTC Desire HD 2.2.1
- HTC Desire 2.2
- HTC Nexus One 2.2-2.3.4
- HTC Evo v2.1-update and 2.2
- LG GT540 CyanogenMod7
- Milestone CyanogenMod7 2.3.3
- Motorola Droid 2.3.3
As always we would love to hear from you! Say hi!
- Using TinEye on a mobile device
Attention iPhone, Blackberry and smartphone junkies! Did you know that you can easily use TinEye to search for images you come across while browsing the web on your phone? Yep, all you need to do is install the TinEye bookmarklet. A bookmarklet is a little script that can be saved as an ordinary bookmark. The TinEye bookmarklet scrapes all of the images from the page you are viewing and sends them to TinEye.
Below is a little walk-through on how to install and use the TinEye bookmarklet on a mobile device, using the iPhone as an example.
Installing the TinEye bookmarklet
The easiest way to install the bookmarklet on your phone, is to add it to your PC/Mac bookmarks first, and then sync your bookmarks to your mobile device. Bear with me, you will only have to do this once!
Start at the TinEye bookmarklet page. Add the bookmarklet by right-clicking the grey ‘TinEye Images’ button and selecting ‘Bookmark This Link’ or ‘Add to Favorites’. In Safari you can just drag the button into your bookmarks toolbar as below:
Here you can see that the bookmarklet has been successfully added to my browser’s bookmarks. It shows up as ‘TinEye images’:
Now sync your PC/Mac bookmarks to your mobile device using the sync software for your smartphone. For the iPhone, this is easily done in iTunes from the ‘Info’ tab for your device. You may sync your bookmarks independently of other data (contacts, music, email, etc.).
I’ve complete the sync, and the TinEye bookmarklet is now showing up in the Safari Bookmarks Bar on my iPhone. Success! Installation complete:
Using the TinEye bookmarklet
Now for the easy part. Using the TinEye bookmarklet is super-simple. Just browse over to a web page containing some images you would like to search. I’ll use the Picasso entry on Wikipedia as an example:
To search for any images on this page, just open up the bookmarks on your mobile device and select the TinEye Images bookmarklet. On the iPhone, your bookmarks are accessed using the icon circled in the screenshot above.
Once you select the TinEye images bookmarklet, all the images on the page you were just viewing will be scraped and sent to TinEye. To search for an image, just select the one you want and view your results:
Fun, no? Once you have your TinEye results you can sort them by size or closest match just as you normally would. See what sorts of interesting results you can find when you’re on the go with TinEye!
- TinEye Mobile
TinEye Mobile is now available for download on the iphone App store! We submitted TinEye Mobile to Apple a few days after our beta testing (thanks folks for helping us beta test) and got our application approval late last week. We have been so busy that we almost forgot to tell you all!
If you are not familiar with TinEye Mobile here is a little video. Basically TinEye Mobile allows you to search for music using a mobile phone camera: snap a photo and get information about the music CD or track you are interested in. It is that simple.
In this first release we don’t just get results back from itunes, but we also get you any information about the CD or track you are searching from YouTube, allmusic and wikipedia. So happy music searching. We would of course love your feedback and requests. But before you can do that, you will need to go download the App!
- To pose, perchance to sleeveface…
As we mentioned last week, the sleeveface contest at the idéeplex during our TinEye Music beta release party was a ton of fun. Now it’s time to select the winners of our sleeveface-off.
To // Sleeveface // : one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion.
Here’s the official “How to Sleeveface” video:
As we told our friends at the iParty, the best of the sleeveface snapshots will win a prize. Jen Dodd clearly pulled off a winning sleeveface with her Nina Hagen look below, so she’s queued up for a prize for sure.
Who else do you think deserves a little something for their sleevefacing efforts? Leave us your comments with your top two picks from the photos below and we’ll tally up the votes and award two more prizes.
Steve Jobs says “there’s one more thing…”
Alannah Myles looking fierce
Superman at the idéeplex (looking a little blurry!)
Bob Marley contemplates image search
J.Lo poses (FYI, it’s Amber!)
Sarah Palin is pro-Heineken, gosh darn it!
Okay, so those are our contestants for the prizes. But wait! I have a few more snaps for you – here are the idéalists avoiding work on a Friday afternoon by sleevefacing:
Prince gives idée the thumbs up
Lennon gets serious about image search
Lookin’ fine Barry…
Having a Sheryl Crow moment
Uhm, Leila… that‘s not *quite* right!
- That’s better!
If you are diggin’ the sleeveface you can see more on Flickr and Facebook. Even fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is into sleeveface (kind of anyway).
Happy sleevefacing friends! If you try it out remember to post a link to your photos in the comments, we’d love to see them.
- They came, they saw, they installed TinEye Music…
Last night we hosted a little event here at the idéeplex to share the latest toy we are working on. We were lucky to have a great group of folks from the Toronto tech community join us to ‘kick the tires’ of our soon-to-be-released beta app for iPhone.
Thanks to everyone who came by and made the night a smashing success. It was really exciting for the team here at Idée to see TinEye Music, the first iPhone application of our visual search technology, out the door for beta testing.
With TinEye Music you use your iPhone to take a photo of any album cover. Almost instantly that snapshot gets compared to our index of over a million album covers and the app sends you right to the iTunes page for that artist where you can preview songs, buy tracks or even purchase the entire album right from your iPhone.
You can learn more about our app by watching our quick little video or reading today’s posts by Mathew Ingram and Adam Schwabe. Jevon from StartupNorth beat all of us all to the punch, however, with his TinEye Music review posted during the party.
On top of the great conversations and lots of music searching with our TinEye iPhone app, we also did a little “sleevefacing” last night. If you aren’t familiar with the term “sleeveface“, take a look at some of our guests demonstrating it here and here. Amber MacArthur channelled her inner J.Lo, Libin Pan did his best Steve Jobs pose and Jen Dodd rocked on as Nina Hagen (Jen, you win sleeveface of the night, we’ll send you your prize!). It was a lively night for all.
We have a ton of photos to share. For even more, Ben Lucier has shots of the party over on Flickr and photographer Rannie Turingan posted lots of great pics too.
This photo Rannie took of Jevon performing “the TinEye maneuver” with his iPhone is one of my favourites, followed closely by Alice’s snapshot of the other Beta at the party last night.
Well, the fun might be over but the work is not. This is just the beginning of bringing visual search to the world of mobile technology and we have a lot more in store for you, stay tuned!
** Photo: Jevon strikes a pose – Rannie Turingan
- TinEye Mobile
What could possibly have us more excited than the release of our image search engine TinEye 4 months ago? It’s our killer new TinEye Mobile application.
The idea is very simple: Using our TinEye Mobile application installed on your smartphone take a photograph of a product (a CD, DVD, book or game etc.) you would like more information about, we’ll identify the item using our image recognition algorithms and then send you on to read reviews, sample music or do price comparisons.
Let’s take a real example: our first mobile release is TinEye Music. This is mobile searching for music on your iPhone. Take a photograph of an album cover and we will compare your image to over a million album covers we have indexed and send you to the iTunes page where you can preview or buy the songs from the album. TinEye Music will be released shorty – pending QA and App Store approval – but you get the idea! And all of this is done using our image recognition technology. No typing, no barcodes. Shoot and search.
I made a little video, very rough but that should give you an idea of what we are talking about!
- TinEyeing with iPhone’s Safari
Ever wanted to see where and how an image on a web page is being used but were away from your desktop computer? Well now you can on devices like the iPhone using our new bookmarklet!
Once you have added the TinEye Images bookmarklet in your desktop Safari and have synced the bookmarks with the iPhone, follow these steps:
1. Visit any website
2. Select the TinEye Images bookmark
3. Wait for images to be fetched from page
4. Choose an image
5. View results!
6. If you want, zoom in!
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