Visual search engine Superfish nets $5.3M

Superfish, a stealthy startup that will eventually let users search by sight, reeled in $5.3 million in second-round financing. The Palo Alto, Calif. company has been in research mode for a couple of years and plans to launch the service in the next several months.

Very… Continue Reading

China’s City!N social network launches face detection app

China’s City!N social network launches face detection app

Fresh from its launch a week ago, the new Chinese social network City!N is launching today one of the features that it hopes will differentiate it: face detection.

The tool draws a box around any facesĀ it finds in pictures uploaded to the site. Users can then… Continue Reading

Image search race: Polar Rose, Pixsy, Snap, Ookles, Riya — list is getting long

Image search race: Polar Rose, Pixsy, Snap, Ookles, Riya — list is getting long

Google and Yahoo have image and video search, but they’ve kept things to themselves, oddly not syndicating these for other sites to use like they have with their text search engines.

No doubt, they will do so soon. Meantime, a host of specialized image search… Continue Reading

Xcavator joins race in visual search

Xcavator joins race in visual search

Visual search technology is still in its infancy, but a number of new start-ups are pushing the possibilities forward — the latest being Xcavator.

Riya’s Like launched recently (see our coverage), giving users a way of highlighting a shoe, or part of a shoe, and then… Continue Reading

Yahoo acquires online contest site, Bix

Yahoo acquires online contest site, Bix

Yahoo has acquired Bix, the Palo Alto start-up that lets people compete in online karaoke, hot or not and other contests.

The amount was undisclosed, but this acquisition was fast; Bix launched barely three months ago.

It is the latest sign of focus by Yahoo in… Continue Reading