Google Coupons and improving Picasa
There are a couple of stories on the “Google front” today. First up Coupons tied into Google location searching (maps.) More details at the Adwords blog. (BTW, this is open to US businesses, an Adwords account is not a requirement.) It looks like they’ll put up printable coupons for businesses. There seem to be quite a few possibilities for extending this idea. (More coverage here.) The next item puts to rest a rumor from some time back. It seems as though at one point in time, Google was interested in Riya, who specializes in image recognition (hey – that’s Bob in that picture.)
Well, they (Google) seem to have contracted with another company, Neven Vision, to improve picasa with “better ways to organize photos”, which would seem to include recognizing people and places. Initially, just recognizing that there is a person in the image is one of the improvements they talk about. No samples are yet available, but they hope soon to be able to show some of their work. More info here, taking the angle of competition with Riya. and coverage here as well. It sounds like it may become much easier to search based on images.