Hitachi Launches a Trial of GazoPa, a Similar Image Search Service
GazoPa Selected As TechCrunch50 Venture Project
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT)(TOKYO:6501)(hereafter “Hitachi”), announced today that it has launched a trial of a similar image search service called GazoPa as an invitation-only beta at TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. GazoPa was selected as a finalist at the conference.
GazoPa is a web image search service that uses features from an image to search for and identify similar images. In conventional image search, users do not find results of image searches to be as accurate as those of web page searches. This is often because some images do not have metadata, some have incorrect metadata, and some are difficult to describe with words. Therefore, keywords are not sufficient as the only conditions for image searches.
With GazoPa, users can overcome the limitations of metadata, and word descriptions. GazoPa enables users to search for similar images using characteristics such as a color or a shape extracted from the image itself. GazoPa even enables the use of users’ own photos, drawings, and images found on the web, as search keys to locate similar images from the GazoPa database. Not only does GazoPa support photos but also searches video thumbnails. Unlike video sharing websites that use keywords to search, users can search for videos using images.
GazoPa enables searches at high speed even for large quantities of image data. GazoPa currently searches 50 million images crawled from the web within one second. Since GazoPa crawls the web continuously, it will soon be capable of searching more than 100 million images.
As the number of digital camera and camera phones increases steadily to exceed 1 billion worldwide, the number of digital images that are captured by digital devices also increases dramatically. It therefore becomes more and more important to search for a needed image from a large quantity of images in a short time. GazoPa overcomes the limits of keyword searches and introduces a new world to image searches.
For detailed information about GazoPa, please visit its website at http://www.gazopa.com
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TOKYO: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 390,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2007 (ended March 31, 2008) consolidated revenues totaled 11,226 billion yen ($112.2 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials, logistics and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.
About TechCrunch50
Founded in 2007 by leading technology blog TechCrunch and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, the TechCrunch50 conference provides a platform for early-stage, and frequently unfunded, companies to launch for the first time to the technology industry's most influential venture capitalists, corporations, angel investors, fellow entrepreneurs and the international media. Companies are selected to participate exclusively on merit. TechCrunch50 is supported by corporate sponsors Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Salesforce, MSN Money, Symantec, Thomson Reuters and Yahoo!, as well as venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Hitachi Launches a Trial of GazoPa
Friday, July 6, 2007
South Koreans Connect Through Search Engine
From New York Times -
SEOUL, South Korea July 4, 2007 — Park Hye Ran, a 15-year-old high school student, wanted to know the shortest route from a bus terminal in the southern port city of Busan to a fish market to the east.
That is precisely the kind of question that Cho In Joon, 50, a seller of lottery tickets in Busan, loves to answer.
Sitting at a computer installed at his street kiosk, Mr. Cho posted a reply for Ms. Park — and for other Naver.com users who might one day ask the same question — with instructions on where she should switch trains, which station exit she should take and how long it would take to walk from there to the market. He even attached a map of the market area.
Thanks to tens of thousands of other volunteer respondents, Web users in Korea seldom Google anything. They “Naver” it.
Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country. It handles more than 77% of all Web searches originating in South Korea, thanks largely to content generated by users, free of charge.
Daum.net, another South Korean search portal, comes in second with a 10.8% share, followed by Yahoo's Korean-language service with 4.4%.
Google, the top search engine in the world, barely registers in the country’s online consciousness, handling just 1.7% of South Korean Web searchesl
