Lincoln : Phone Using images to search the internet

Ever imagine searching for information on your cell phone by typing keywords turn out to be cumbersome and frustrating. Hang on there’s good news coming up, a researchers at Microsoft have developed a software prototype called Lincoln that they hope will make Web searches easier.

According to Larry Zitnick, a Microsoft researcher who works on the project, phones equipped with the software could, for example, access online movie reviews by snapping pictures of movie posters or DVD covers and get product information from pictures of advertisements in magazines or on buses.

"The main thing we want to do is connect real-world objects with the Web using pictures," says Zitnick. "[Lincoln] is a way of finding information on the Web using images instead of keywords."

The software works by matching pictures taken on phones with pretagged pictures in a database. It provides the best results when the pictures are of two-dimensional objects, such as magazine ads or DVD covers, Zitnick says.


Lincoln is part of a trend to link the physical world with information on the Web, often with the help of cell-phone cameras. Nokia researchers are developing software and hardware that automatically hyperlinks buildings, storefronts, and certain people via a cell-phone camera.

According to Zitnick, there are two elements that distinguish his technology from others. First is the fact that anyone can contribute images, links, and comments to the database. The second element is the type of image-recognition system that Microsoft researchers have developed, which Zitnick believes will be able to search through millions of images quickly.

At the heart of the image-recognition engine is an algorithm that analyzes a picture and creates a signature that describes the picture succinctly, using a small amount of data.

The technology no doubt is incredible but as with all technology it has it pro and con. No technology is totally excellent and can fore go all the disadvantages it might have. But than again, who’s complaining. Technology is better than not having technology at all. Can you imagine living with out a hand phone? It’s like walking without a shoe or underwear (just joking). It’s true isn’t it? Common you know better.

I was always fascinated with all the technology the brainy come up with but some time I got piss off as well as it introduced all sort of problem i.e. radiation for example. Have you ever notice or give a thought that at this very moment an electromagnetic field is already radiate from the entire gadget such as hand phones, electronic appliances to name a few, surrounding our well being and actually harm our body cells without us realizing it. No body is complaining huh? Maybe it not so important since us all dies sooner or later due to age. But what about if we die due to harmful, bodily harm, haphazard radiation? Do we have to endure the suffering of so called cancer? I’m not against technology but all these manufacturers think is making money but neglect the safety concerning health.

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