MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => General - Top Sites => Topic started by: MicrostockExp on January 15, 2008, 13:19

Title: New seach engine
Post by: MicrostockExp on January 15, 2008, 13:19
I just found this article below regarding a  new search engine called Xcavator (http://www.xcavator.net/), quite neat  ;D


Macworld Conference & Expo 2008

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CogniSign, a leader in image and video search technology, has expanded its stock photography search portal at xcavator.netTM to almost six million images of inventory. Xcavator.net is unique due to CogniSign’s award-winning Intelligent Image Recognition TechnologyTM, which enhances conventional text based searches with powerful Image Search tools.

The portal is open to the public at www.xcavator.net. A video introduction is provided to help new users get the most out of their xcavator.net experience.

This new launch ends a very successful six month Beta test. Garth Johnson, vice president of business and community development for iStockphoto, the pioneer of micropayment stock photography and the first agency to test xcavator.net, said, “We are impressed by how quickly the Image Search technology at xcavator.net presents stock photo buyers with many viable options during the stock photo browsing and final selection process. We’re very pleased to be a provider of microstock inventory at a site where there are so many powerful search tools to help buyers make their final selections.”

Xcavator.net Image Search tools help users dig easily through millions of photos visually. The site meets the needs of stock photo buyers looking to quickly find the exact photo needed to complete marketing, advertising, or communications pieces. The site is also useful to sellers of stock photography; they can search the site by provider to quickly determine which one needs the type of stock photos they have to offer.

New providers will be added selectively over the next few months, increasing site inventory to more than 10 million photos – making xcavator.net one of the largest stock photo portals in the world. Today, in the Royalty Free (Microstock) category, the four providers are Fotolia, iStockphoto, LuckyOliver, and 123RF. In the Rights Managed category, the two providers are Photovault of San Francisco and Danita Delimont of Seattle.

Danita Delimont, Founder and CEO of DanitaDelimont.com, a niche agency specializing in worldwide travel and nature, believes the site’s powerful Image Search technology will have a major impact on converting browsers to buyers. “This technology can help browsers to quickly find exactly what they need, in a fraction of the amount of time it takes using traditional keyword methods,” she says. “I know that when potential buyers come to us from xcavator.net, they’ve already dramatically narrowed their search and are very close to a buying decision. This is extremely valuable to my business.”

Market research has shown that designers, art directors, marketing and business communications professionals, and others in the design community are incredibly rushed when making final selections of stock photography, which is often the last element needed before going to print. The proprietary Image Search tools at xcavator.net allow buyers to quickly get to a large number of photos that approximately meet their needs, providing enough relevant choices to make the final selection a much easier, faster, and more satisfying process.

In addition to keywords, the xcavator.net stock photo search portal uses proprietary Image Search and color filtering technology, giving users a combination of tools to find what they are looking for. The key to these search capabilities is the portal’s image and color search engines. These engines allow a user to look for similar images within databases containing millions of images – just like a human can look at a few dozen manually – based on color, key features and their spatial relationships and proximity, etc.

CogniSign’s objective for xcavator.net is to create powerful, fast, fun, and easy-to-use Image Search tools to augment the keyword (text based) search currently used to search stock photography. In most cases, just a few keywords are needed and the site’s proprietary visual browsing can easily complete the task.

“In user testing, we saw a natural inclination for users to spend a lot of time changing and adding keywords to refine their stock photo search,” said Bryan Calkins, CEO of CogniSign, “which is a time consuming and iterative process that can often lead a user down a blind alley with very few results. Xcavator.net’s Image Search tools need just a few keywords to get the process started, and search refinement happens visually. This provides much more powerful and efficient browsing, where the user is presented with a lot more options that have still been refined to meet his needs.”

About CogniSign

CogniSign is a technology company providing image and video search product solutions for Internet and mobile markets, based on its award-winning Intelligent Image Recognition Technology (patents pending). CogniSign is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit http://www.cognisign.com. For immediate assistance, please email Celia Cratch at [email protected].

NOTE: CogniSign, the CogniSign logo, xcavator, xcavator.net, the xcavator.net logo, and Intelligent Image Recognition Technology are trademarks of CogniSign LLC. All other company and product names mentioned are used only for identification and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: leaf on January 15, 2008, 14:17
looks like a pretty fancy toy.

Interesting to note which microstock libraries are included
Istock
123RF
Fotolia and....
Lucky Oliver
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: RacePhoto on January 15, 2008, 16:02
looks like a pretty fancy toy.

Interesting to note which microstock libraries are included
Istock
123RF
Fotolia and....
Lucky Oliver

Before I jump for joy, I searched for a sushi image that's on two of the above sites, and it did not appear. Maybe they are still indexing images. I'll try again in a couple of days. I picked something distinctive and easy to find.

It is impressive and offers all kinds of specific features that look interesting, especially for someone looking for images beyond keywords.

Go search for Sushi and tell me what you think the keyword is that brings up all those non-sushi images, pencils, hand shake, empty room, fireworks, a shopping cart, a 1/4" microphone plug, and a dog?  ;D

I think it's still indexing and updating. There were eight pages of sushi when I searched just after Noon. Now there are nine pages.

Don't take this wrong. I like it. One search for four sites? It's good.

Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: rosta on January 15, 2008, 18:24
I typed in poison ivy and  four of the images that were on the first page were mine.  Two was from IS, one from FT and one that I had removed from LO and when I clicked on it the link went to the LO front page. (it was a duplicate image of the IS one).  I went to the second page and six images of mine came up, with two duplicates. 
This may be the start of some good things :-)
rosta
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: brm1949 on January 15, 2008, 18:34
Just tried whitetail deer and a lot of my images showed up, this could be very good.
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: maunger on January 16, 2008, 06:36
Thanks for the PR!

I've tried their beta and this has improved a bunch if you ask me... tried "sanibel" (an island in florida where i vacation a lot) and the page is practically filled with my images :)

even my "white billboard" shows up quite a bit...

and they've improved the user interface a bunch too - not quite as hard to understand how to use as it was before.

could be great news for sales :)
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: zorki on January 16, 2008, 08:54
I did a couple of quick searches on obscure items that I have. They came up on the first page, but near the end of the first page and after a whole bunch of unrelated items before it. Did a little poking around at the images that did come up and this search engine seems to favor many keywords. The opposite seems to be happening at IS. They are favoring fewer keywords so the results are completely different. Which I guess is OK for digging up those images with fewer downloads.
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: RacePhoto on December 26, 2008, 22:06
Anyone look at it lately? http://www.xcavator.net/ gives 404 error.

Another one bites the dust or just a temporary outage?

I liked the way it worked.

Same for Cognisign. Last activity I can find is Feb. 2008.   http://cognisign.net/index.php

Did this site go from test to Beta to disappearing? Anyone have any information?
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: lagereek on December 27, 2008, 03:01
Any search engine will only be as good as whats accepted into a library, without zero tollerance of spamming it will soon be destroyed.
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: RacePhoto on November 08, 2009, 23:32
Any search engine will only be as good as whats accepted into a library, without zero tollerance of spamming it will soon be destroyed.


SAN FRANCISCO, July 18, 2007 – CogniSign, a leader in image search technology,
has signed iStockphoto, the world’s busiest image and video market, to join its
xcavator.netTM visual search portal, which services both buyers and sellers in the
stock photography market. iStockphoto’s inventory of 1.8 million photos from over
38,000 contributors has already been added to the portal.

http://www.cognisign.com/PressRelease_CogniSign_071807.pdf (http://www.cognisign.com/PressRelease_CogniSign_071807.pdf)

I guess it didn't take off. One of the reasons I ask is I liked the look and the various search features, beyond keywords. Didn't last long did it?
Title: Re: New seach engine
Post by: leaf on November 11, 2009, 16:45
RIP