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A comment on The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends. Parent comment

Re:The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends by rhizome on Monday January 13, 2014 @03:17PM (#7052990)
Not sure that a business based on taking a photo of something and asking people "what is this?" is destined for success. Isn't that something that Google Now/Siri will probably automatically answer in the near future?

These services require data-entry on the part of their users in order to seed these identification engines. I see this data-entry as a hidden value of the user, and part of why network effects are so valued by VCs/the market.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends by jellicle on Monday January 13, 2014 @04:36PM (#7053564)
Doesn't Google have a sort of "index" and "search engine" of billions of photos with captions, link headings, title text, alternate text, and so on?

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=lug+nut

You're telling me it only works one way, from text to images, and doesn't work the other way? But Google already lets you upload an image to search...

http://www.google.com/imghp

In any case, Google can simply say "I think it's a lug nut. Do you agree Y/N?" And in effect, play 20 questions with its entire userbase. In very short order it would be capable of identifying anything.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Friends Of My Friends Are Not My Friends by rhizome on Monday January 13, 2014 @05:50PM (#7054132)
The lug nut question is an important verification step and indeed data-entry on the part of the user.
[ Parent | on HN ]