When the people of FD kinesis are not hard at work planning and creating the next best thing to sliced bread (which takes up a majority of their day), they shop—online mostly. Online shopping is a very technical thing to do. It may be even harder than coding a landing page. Figuring out sizes, cuts, colors, patterns and shapes can become very painstaking, making it a very meticulous and nerve wrecking process.
Websites provide a very simple and established way to refine a user’s search to make it a bit more manageable. This can either be by color, price, material, etc. But, what if there was a different way to search? What if there was a way for the online shopper to search and be served up results based on responding to images?
I recently discovered a great site called Like.com. Like.com is a product aggregator that allows users to 
visually search for products. They have generated a very intuitive and unique way to search for things, specifically clothing, shoes, and jewelry. By utilizing “Likeness Technology,” it allows users to search for similar looking products. Users are able to search for clothing, accessories, and home goods.
This technology can be utilized in a number of different ways. By conducting an initial search, users can select an item that they like, isolate it and refine the search to color, shape, or even both. The search results are then refined to your specifications. The results are very accurate and provide other options at all different price points.
A second and very useful way to search is via their “likethis” tool. This tool allows you to upload an image from a website or that you have taken of any shoe, handbag or dress and the software matches the image as closely as possible. The results are emailed to the user.
For you iPhone users out there, Like.com has developed their “likethis” tool into an application. On the go users can snap pics of items they might like, upload it and have results for similar items at their fingertips.
This is a great example of how visual search is being used in a very innovative way. This method of search can provide consumers with many different options. Whether it is shoes, clothing or homes. There are a few sites like searchme.com that are providing visual search results, but have not become very popular yet. Visual search seems to be the next upcoming Web 2.0 execution.
Shopping on your lunch hour isn’t such a bad thing after all. It provides great fodder for a blog entry, and red shoes for your closet. It’s like killing 2 birds with one stone. It’s that simple.
Momentum 
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