http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog A blog about our image search engine and the image search industry. en-us Sat, 25 May 2013 12:34:13 EDT Sat, 25 May 2013 12:34:13 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Incogna+GIS+launches It's been quite some time in the making, but we're proud to finally announce the launch of Incogna GIS! This division of Incogna is specialized in on-demand geospatial data processing. Just upload your imagery and we let you extract exactly what you need from it, in record time - thanks to our cluster of on-demand GPUs. We spent a good part of this week at Geotec 2010, where our CTO participated in the GIS Cloud Computing round table along with Mano Marks from Google, Chris Pendleton from Microsoft and David Stanley of PCI Geomatics... Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Incogna+GIS+launches http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Zen+and+the+art+of+parallel+coding Today at Incogna we were discussing, as we tend to, development on the GPU. It was joked that you almost need the patience of a Buddhist monk in this line of work... Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Zen+and+the+art+of+parallel+coding http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Shop+your+heart+out%21 We're proud to announce the latest addition to the Incogna family, Shopachu! Shopachu is a new breed of visual shopping site, we've combined Incogna's search capabilities with the ability to combine products together to create outfits, as well as a handy price history viewer with sale notifications. Never again will you be left out of the loop when top quality fashion goes on sale!... Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Shop+your+heart+out%21 http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Similar+Images%2C+Incogna+update The web is abuzz about Google's latest Similar Images Labs release. I love that Google is finally devoting some resources to this problem, since their main image search engine basically hasn't changed much since it was launched (other than expanding in size). I always get the question: "What if Google is working on Image Search?" and I always answer: "Oh, they are." It's great to finally see the results!... Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Similar+Images%2C+Incogna+update http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#The+pudding+is+ready+%28and+guess+what+it+proves%29 Monetization is a key question for many startups with cool technology. As you may (or may not) know, Incogna was the first company to combine both image and product search results together visually. This has granted us a new way to monetize image search, without displaying any annoying text ads. So, if you search for boots or jeans and some products happen match your query, then we display those products as "Sponsored Images" on the side. This is basically identical to how text search was monetized, only it's been a heck of a lot more complicated to do with images... Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#The+pudding+is+ready+%28and+guess+what+it+proves%29 http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Open+for+business It's taken years of time. Between designing the visual processing algorithms, assembling the resources to build a cluster and convincing/finding people willing to help out, it's been a ton of work. But it's also been a blast. And here are the (initial) results: the Incogna image search engine!... Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Open+for+business http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Alpha-riffic%21 I just wanted to say thank you to all of the alpha users who signed up and tested everything out, your suggestions and comments (and even a few bug reports) have been fantastic!... Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Alpha-riffic%21 http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Awards+and+grants+and+alpha%2C+oh+my%21 It's been a busy week... Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Awards+and+grants+and+alpha%2C+oh+my%21 http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#How+big...is+your+index%3F When it comes to search on the web, does size really matter? Cuil has made claims at a bigger image index than Google, but I haven't been able to do any successful searches on Cuil yet. While size matters, it seems clear that quality is a pretty important factor... Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#How+big...is+your+index%3F http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Incogna+Demo Here is a quick demo showing the Incogna search engine in action:... Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Incogna+Demo http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#The+GPU+Revolution It seems like Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) supercomputers are starting to appear everywhere. It's a quiet revolution at the moment, but one that will certainly grow to consume supercomputing as a whole... Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#The+GPU+Revolution http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Who+needs+image+search%3F A question I get asked a lot is: "is image search even popular?"... Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Who+needs+image+search%3F http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Canadians+are+good+at+image+search%2C+eh%3F I've been testing a new image search engine from Idee Inc, called TinEye. They are (also) a Canadian company and have been doing copyright-based image processing/search for a few years now. TinEye is in beta and is being called the "Google of Image Search"... Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Canadians+are+good+at+image+search%2C+eh%3F http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Google+Image+Search There has been a lot of commotion over a recent Google publication on PageRank for Image Search. So, what's this all about? Is Google about to revolutionize image search? Well, I don't think so... Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Google+Image+Search http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Google+Android+Application+complete ShapeShoppr has been submitted to the Google Android Challenge... Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Google+Android+Application+complete http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OTTN+Phase+2+Grant+Approved Ottawa Technology Transfer Network phase 2 has been approved, this third grant will allow the index to continue scaling until the end of the year... Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OTTN+Phase+2+Grant+Approved http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OCRI+Nomination I have been nominated for Student Researcher of the Year at the OCRI awards... Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OCRI+Nomination http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Patent+Filed%21 The image search patent has been filed :)... Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Patent+Filed%21 http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Innovator+of+the+Year I have (somewhat unexpectedly) won the University of Ottawa Innovator of the Year award for my work in image search... Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Innovator+of+the+Year http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OTTN+Phase+1+Grant+Approved This second grant will significantly enhance the hardware compliment, mostly as cache servers and storage space... Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#OTTN+Phase+1+Grant+Approved http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Ottawa-Gatineau+University+Regional+Innovation+Alliance+Grant+Approved The first grant has been approved; this will provide the hardware necessary to build the first phase of the visual image indexing cluster. What's left to do? Well, setting up and managing a cluster isn't exactly point and click; especially for a project as specialized as a large scale image search engine. The cluster and related components will use: ... Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 EDT http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Ottawa-Gatineau+University+Regional+Innovation+Alliance+Grant+Approved http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Tech+Venture+Challenge+Semi-finalist The project has made it to the semi-finals in the Tech Venture Challenge... Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Tech+Venture+Challenge+Semi-finalist http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Elevator+Pitch I managed to get first place in the 2007 Entrepreneur's Club Elevator Pitch; meta-crawlers aren't sufficient as image search engines :)... Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST http://www.incogna.com/?page=blog#Elevator+Pitch