

Show HN: Crowdsourced Object Recognition - argumentum
http://www.crowdsend.com/

======
seagreen
This is a really cool idea and I'm glad someone's doing it. Have you
considered talking to Amazon about it? It's definitely in their best interest
for products to be easily identifiable, and they're already doing work on it
in a different way with Price Check[1].

Unfortunately there are other companies with a strong incentive to make
identifying specific products as difficult as possible[2]. And clothing
companies have never been good about sticking with a specific product anyway.
I got a Ralph Lauren suit last year that I liked enough to consider ordering
another one, but they had already stopped making that style. Maybe dresses or
something I could understand, but men's suits?

If you can't buy a product even if you can identify it, then what's the point?
Do you have any thoughts on how to get around this problem? One idea that
comes to mind is that you could use your data to build a ranking of how long
clothing companies (or any companies) stick with their products. I'd certainly
find it useful.

Best of luck!

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pri...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pricecheck)

[2]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457717...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577177242516227440.html)

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timmyd
thanks for the comment mate!

yeah - we currently actually work with a heap of retailers and we do match to
where you buy them - we've around 90 or so at the moment (love to get your
thoughts on <http://about.crowdsend.com>).

publishers can do a bunch of stuff too - but we think the bigger problem rests
with the community than with publishers.

basically once a product's been identified then we match it to a bunch of
retailers if we can find it!

~~~
greendestiny
Love the idea, sent through a beta invite request. Not sure about the fade in
on the images on about.crowdsend I find it a bit annoying combined with
scrolling - its like having two transitions on a powerpoint slide.

~~~
timmyd
thanks mate. yeah i tried playing with that a bit - the idea was to stop
people reading ahead so they focus on the content they are viewing and don't
skip stuff

i can totally appreciate its annoying. kinda tough how to balance it

~~~
greendestiny
Yeah I can't think of any tricks that would work better for that. Although I
think letting people skip through the way they normally read sites would be a
good thing.

~~~
timmyd
Yeah I tried to put those slide buttons on the right side to help with that
prob but ill try to think how to fix what you mention. Thanks heaps for the
feedback

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timmyd
Hey Guys,

Thanks for checking out our product. Been working hard on it to resolve the
problem of object recognition and trying to produce something thats different
to what's out there right now.

If you know anyone that want's to help or get involved - love to speak to them
or if you want an invite just let me know and I'll send it right now.

Love your feedback on <http://about.crowdsend.com> too if you can! Open to
anything.

~~~
argumentum
Btw, Tim's from Australia and has been staying at my house in Los Altos for a
month or so. Gotten to know him well, great guy and fantastic front-end
hacker.

We've been working together putting some finishing touches on CrowdSend. I
think it's going to be a winner.

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mef
Interesting product. What's the incentive for someone to do the research to
figure out what's in an image?

~~~
kwekly
I deal a bit with arty types, and they tend to pride themselves on being able
to identify products, along with designers and quoting how many hundred $'s
something "costs"

I think it's a bit like nerds and bragging rights in being able to produce
good explanations for difficult technical questions. Along that line of
thinking, perhaps a stackoverflow karma / community recognition style system
might be enough.

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neya
Really cool concept mate, congrats! Keep up the good work. One small feedback
- The photo of the guy on the frontpage looks more like Justin Beiber (I
thought it was him, for a second) :D Other than that, everything else is
perfect!

Cheers, Good luck!

~~~
timmyd
thanks mate :) been a lot of work to get here and its only the start!

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driverdan
As a (mostly) non-consumer myself using this doesn't really interest me but I
can see how the Pinterest crowd would love it as well as the businesses who
make the products.

Do you automate some of the product identification or is it only by users?

~~~
timmyd
At the moment - we are just focusing on getting data together from users which
has been a fair bit of work. We do some automation in the background - but
we're bootstrapped so its all what time we have!

We think being able to ask what something is and getting a response from a
community is something thats a bit different in the image space.

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caublestone
Great idea. Make a mobile app with an incentive so people can ID images to
waste time. Focus on fine tuning an algorithm by checking against what people
say and we could be on our way to making a really good image processor.

~~~
timmyd
yeah thats in the works at the moment mate. great idea with the algorithm

we're totally bootstrapped so just trying to get the web app sorted at the
moment and then we'll get that out!

~~~
ewang1
you could do a game. i've seen people getting really addicted to those iOS
logo ID games.

for the incentives, just use something like kiip.

~~~
timmyd
yeah we've got a few ideas but at the moment we are just trying to figure out
the best way to do it! thanks for the comment

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dm8
Congrats on launch! Not to spoil your party, there is another startup that is
working in the similar space - www.luminate.com

What will be the primary use case of your product?

~~~
timmyd
What we solve - which we think is the biggest problem - is being able to ask
what is inside an image.

You as a user, can grab any image, from any website - and ask what is inside
it and others can help you. That's what we believe is the biggest problem.

The problem isn't arriving at an image and knowing - its arriving and not
knowing. Luminate (and others) require the publishers to tag - however what if
you arrive at some website (like the entire of instagram as one tiny example)
and want to know what's in an image - where do you go ? Google - nope. That's
just similar images they don't tell you any more. Luminate won't help you
either.

So that's the difference - luminate and everyone else doesn't actually help
you solve a problem as you surf the web.

Love to give you a preview if you're interested - we've done all this
bootstrapped. We are only in beta so there will be bugs!

~~~
greendestiny
Not to mention rolling over something in luminate pops up a lightbox that
obscures the image and has to be closed.

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frozenport
I dragged a box over the ipod demo image and tried to identify as an ipod. It
told me it couldn't find anything called "ipod"?

~~~
timmyd
yeah sorry - the server is getting smashed at the moment - have to free up
some mem!

but let me know what browser so i can double check ?

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hayksaakian
I really Google doing something like this a long while ago. They turned it
into a game of some mind. (My memory fails me)

~~~
timmyd
Yeah but we are a bit different in our approach and the way we are trying to
resolve it :)

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tled
Awesome man, I would like to integrate it on my Website and my iOS/Android
app. Hope you guys open the API soon. <3

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jermaink
good luck, mate! Loving to be behind the scenes :)

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keshansodi
Good luck men, great idea.

~~~
timmyd
thanks a heap. if you're after an invite just let us know

