TinEye image search engine launches public beta

Filed under: Beta, Search

TinEye image search engine launches public beta

by Brad Linder May 11th 2008

There are plenty of image search engines on the web. Enter a text based search term, and Google, MSN, or Yahoo! will spit out a series of pictures it thinks match that query. But TinEye takes a slightly different approach. This image search engine, currently in private beta, lets you upload an image from your desktop and search the web for identical or similar images. You can also use an online image as your starting point.

The concept is pretty cool. If you're looking for an image, why should you have to enter text? But the truth of the matter is it takes a bit longer to search for something using TinEye than a text based search engine. And it's a lot harder to get accurate results. If you upload a popular image that's been used on a bunch of web sites, you should be fine. But if you upload your hand-drawn image of Angelina Jolie naked, don't expect to find any high resolution images matching your query. Not that we tried.

But seriously, we uploaded a few images that have been posted here at Download Squad, and TinEye didn't spit out a single match, which means it doesn't even indext this site. So while the service claims to be searching a whopping 487 million images, it doesn't exactly cover every site on the web.

Still, we'll be keeping an eye on TinEye. If the service can improve its index and do a better job of finding similar images, and not just identical ones, it could actually become useful.

[via WebWare]

Tags: image-search, search-engine, tineye

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

jccalhoun said 4:24PM on 5-11-2008

Amber Macarthur did a demo video for them : http://ambermac.com/articles/2008/05/06/tin-eye-does-for-images-what-google-does-for-text

mirko said 7:15PM on 5-16-2008

gout

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters