Vodafone Germany launches mobile visual search service “otello”
Two stories in one. Firstly -
Vodafone Germany has teamed up with the magazine BILD to create an image search engine for camera phones.
What?
Well basically it’s just picture search via SMS but its sounds good!
BILD (German Magazine) fans can use their phones to take pictures of the BILD to get articles sent directly back to the phone. The number to SMS is 4242.
This service is possible via the new photo search service called “otello”.
Otello?
This is the meatier of the stories and is basically an image based search machine using MMS.
Otello enables users to take pictures of cars, books or CD covers and then send the picture via MMS for direct links to information on the picture (where to buy, Wikipedia etc).
I think there is also a face recognition service included in this because the press release also mentions Vodafone Lookalike services.
What we think?
This is nifty and the future. Otello is not really visual search (per se) as there is no search box or engine that finds pictures based on the service. But it is a nifty MMS search service for pictures. With more of these types of services we will be closer to realising proper visual mobile search services with LBS. This allows users to submit pictures for visual results or take pictures of landmarks for instant social networking (Flikr) or TripAdvisor style results.
More on this in a follow up post. (Also do you have a mobile photo search or visual search offer – let me know!).
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7 Responses to “Vodafone Germany launches mobile visual search service “otello””
That’s nothing new. Since September last year, 20Minutes, the most successful daily newspaper in Switzerland, links its content using the visual search engine from kooaba.
Comment made on March 3rd, 2008 at 7:24 amHi Bena,
It’s interesting that you do not consider the “Otello” service as described to be mobile visual search. Could you comment on that. The common understand of the term “mobile visual search” is to search on mobile using an image based query rather than a conventional keyword based query. The result, as with conventional search, can be any type of media. One of the great advantages of mobile visual search is that it’s the closest you can get to searching with a single click. Of course I would advocate Mobile Acuity’s solution.
Comment made on March 3rd, 2008 at 4:26 pmHI Anthony,
I agree its visual search via MMS.
This has been around for awhile but I would call it discovery. As with your solution when you take a picture of an image and it brings back results.
For me, visual search will be a multi-modal search box where users can find or locate via voice, text, image ….
ON top of that - when you take a picture - it might be one click to take the picture but every time I try there are at least 5 clicks to open the camera and to execute.
Bena
Comment made on March 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 pmHi Bena,
Interesting discussion as always. We had this same debate about search versus discovery at Resolution Media in the context of mobile visual search. Ultimately I think it’s a strange hybrid of search and discovery. The image that is entered will probably be discovered, but the user enters it as a query when they take a picture of it and send it to the engine to process and return more information. If it were only discovery, the user wouldn’t be able to search on something that they haven’t discovered. However, in the case of mobile visual search, if a user wanted more information about a particular topic, they could find a picture of something that related to the topic and use it as a query. To us, this is essentially search behavior.
I wrote about this recently in the context of mobile voice search, if you’re interested:
http://www.findresolution.com/2008/03/mobile-video-search-voice-search.html
Best,
Comment made on March 7th, 2008 at 7:56 amBryson
On the news was that during the Cebit Ottelo could not recognise Angele Merkel, the German Prime Minister.
Comment made on March 8th, 2008 at 5:33 amAbout to get political. But as you know I am in Germany and if Merkel spent more time in Germany sorting out the poor economic climate then perhaps Otello would have managed to capture her and put her in the database.
Comment made on March 8th, 2008 at 10:46 pmHi,
I’m vary interested to know everything about the number 4242,from the telephone numbering point of view:
-what kind of telecommunication servise is
“Mobile Visual Search Service”-(othello)?
-what place take it in naional numbering plan?
-is it a short code, and if so what kind of short code?
-how can it be the same in different country, with diferent numbering plans?
-what about the tariffs, etc. ..?
thank you.
Comment made on May 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 amLeave a Comment