GazoPa Blog

Memory of GazoPa

2011-06-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

相似图片搜索GazoPa

2011-06-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

中文版视频

联系我们 : contact@gazopa.com

Shut Down Notice from GazoPa

2011-05-31T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear GazoPa User,
Thank you for using GazoPa services. GazoPa.com started at TechCrunch50 in September 2008 and has grown to more than 90,000 unique users per month. However, we have decided to put our time and efforts to BtoB business and will discontinue our BtoC services on June8, 2011. We have received lots of inquiries from all over the world and decided to focus on BtoB market especially in China where e-commerce grows dramatically.

When we started our service in 2008, some people were skeptical about our activity. But Since then, the number of images and videos on the internet are increasing and the demand to a navigation tool is growing as well. Considering inquiries that reach to us, we believe similar image search engine would be becoming must-have tool in various kinds of fields.

Due to our limited resources, we have had to make the hard decision to shut down our BtoC sites and decided to focus on BtoB market.

We'll be launching a new image search site mainly for research purpose in near future as an alternative tool for our current users.

If you have any questions, please email contact@gazopa.com.

One again, thank you all for your support over the years.

Sincerely,

The GazoPa team

Stock photo is searchable

2011-01-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

Stock photo is searchable at GazoPa.com now. Searching for Flickr photos with Creative Commons have been popular for users who search for images that can be used at their presentations. Now stock photo can be a choice for your slick presentations.

Just click 'stock photo' tab on search result pages. It enables you to search for similar images among stock photos.

Stock photo from Shutterstock is available now and other stock photo will be added to our database soon.

One year has passed since launch of open beta

2010-10-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

One year has passed since launch of GazoPa.com in open beta. Thank you for your support and feedback. The number of unique user has grown to more than 80,000 per month and it doubled during six months. I should admit that this number is not big as a web service, but it's not too bad as a web service that does not run ads.

The number of images that we have indexed has reached 90 million and it will exceed 100 million soon. It took longer than we expected, because it was not an easy job to handle these huge data. I'm very proud of our engineers who have overcome these difficulties.

We released three services within one year such as GazoPa Style Search, GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom. GazoPa Style Search is a service that our technology has been applied to e-commerce. We changed UI that sorts search results by price range recently and it helps users to find Steal vs. Splurge easily. GazoPa Answers and GazoPa Bloom is a service that has social element and the more users use these, the more interesting these services become.

We released new services one after another during one year. It's a good timing to review our works and to improve these so that we can satisfy current users. We're especially focusing on tuning up search results of GazoPa Style Search. Please keep watching our progress in next one year.

Two years has passed since our launch in private beta

2010-09-10T22:20:00.000-07:00

Two years has passed since launch of GazoPa.com in private beta. It was during my trip in summer vacation that I heard news we were selected as a finalist for TechCrunch50. When I applied to the contest, no one including us believed that we would be selected finally. But fortunately, we got a ticket to pitch our service in front of many audiences. I sometimes imagine what situation we were in if we were not selected. Our situation would have been totally different.

We have released one iPhone app, two facebook app and three web services during this two years. When we released GazoPa.com in private beta two years ago, some people said 'Image search? Is it promising?' But during this two years, situation has been changed a lot. Google implemented similar search feature at Google images and they display advertisements on result pages as they do in web search. They finally acquired like.com last month. EBay started offering beta service of similar image search on fashion category this year.

Situation around image search is moving fast. Image search has been studied many years and it's not a new area as research. Lots of companies have been trying to find a fortune in this field and they failed. Monetizing has been a critical issue for these companies. But e-commerce has been grown rapidly and navigation tool among tons of products has been awaited to be implemented. Image search meets e-commerce and this growing field would be a good application for it.

Our GazoPa Style Search is one of examples of this friendship. Current phase is in very early one and this is closer to our proof of concept rather than final service. We'll add new features continuously so that we can show image search would be a must-have features in e-commerce.

Trend toward image search just started and we'd like to provide necessary services over this tide and celebrate our next two years.

Launch of GazoPa Style and GazoPa Answers

2010-07-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

Two weeks have passed since our launch of GazoPa Style and GazoPa Answers. GazoPa Style is a visual product search site that enables you to browse and search for similar fashion items easily. We have received not a few inquiries from e-commerce companies since our launch of GazoPa.com. But we have not applied our technology to product images specially, so GazoPaStyle is our first step.

GazoPa Style allows you to upload images from your own personal computers and to use images on other sites found by uploading image URL or by their plug-in tool for searching similar products. Currently women’s clothing shown on eBay, Amazon and Etsy are searchable at GazoPa Style.

One of challenging points is to display photos from eBay and Amazon at the same time, because quality of these photos differ from each other. Some photos on eBay are taken by individuals and all photos on Amazon are taken by professional photographers. Displaying photo taken by individual next to professional photo may not always generate a good user experience. It may confuse users whether they can buy new products or used items on Style. We're studying how we can provide a nice user experience.

GazoPa Answers is a visual Q&A site that enables you to ask questions visually. Users of GazoPa.com sent photos to us directly and asked us 'Who is this model?''Where is this?' 'What brand is this?'. Since GazoPa.com is a search service, it requires users to look for answers by themselves, but users may not always reach to appropriate answers. So, we think it may help users if there is a site where users can ask visual questions. This is the story behind GazoPa Answers.

There are lots of Q&A services on the internet, but almost all accept questions by text rather than by image. Type of questions by image is different from that by text and we think GazoPa Answers can have a unique position in Q&A area.

Since we just started GazoPa Answers, there is not many Q&A on it. But the more data we have, the more fun and more useful it becomes.

These service are in Beta stage, so your feedback would be highly appreciated.

GazoPa Presentation at Hitachi's Conference

2010-06-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's glad to inform you that Hideki Kobayashi, a project leader of GazoPa, (it's me) will make a presentation about GazoPa at Hitachi's private conference, uVALUE convention on July23. Hitachi celebrates 100 year anniversary this year and we're honored to be a presenter at their main conference.

I have made presentations at not a few places in USA such as TechCrunch50, Summit at Stanford and Silicon Valley Launch 2009 etc. But this is the first time that I would introduce our service in Japan. It's a good opportunity for us to share our story with Japanese people, although our site has no Japanese version.

All speech would be in Japanese, so please feel free to join our seminar.

Date : 10:00-11:00, July23
Place : Tokyo International Forum

See seminar in detail (in Japanese)

iPhone and Ruby on Rails developer

2010-06-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

We have already found a Ruby Front End Developer for previous post.

In addition to this, we're looking for an iPhone and Ruby on Rails developer as well due to our large volume of development.

Requirement is as follows. Please also see our post on Monster in detail.

The following skills are required
In-depth knowledge and prior experience developing iPhone applications
In-depth knowledge of Objective C
In-depth knowledge of Cocoa Touch
In-depth knowledge of iPhone SDK
In-depth knowledge Interface Builder
Three years experience developing web applications
Three years of applied Ruby on Rails experience
Developing social media experience is preferred
Prior experience using JAVA, MySQL, HTML and CSS
Energetic and Self Motivated
Excellent communication skills

Location : Santa Clara, CA
Duration : Three months

Ruby Front End Developer (contractor)

2010-05-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

We're planning to develop a new social media service and are looking for a Ruby Front End
Developer as a contractor.

Please also see our post on craiglist.

Responsibilities
Design and implement web applications using Ruby on Rails
Develop clear and intuitive front end user interfaces from mock ups or wireframes

Requirements
Three year of applied Ruby on Rails experience
Three years experience developing web applications
Developing social media experience is preferred
Prior experience using Ruby, JAVA, MySQL, HTML and CSS
Energetic and Self Motivated
Excellent communication skills
Must be local to bay area

Contractors work on site in Santa Clara, CA one day per week at least.
Start Date: ASAP
Term: Three month duration (It may be extended.)

Please send us a resume with a recent portfolio to contact (at) gazopa.com.

Why flower?

2010-04-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

Two weeks have passed since our launch of GazoPa Bloom. I was asked by not a few people including venture capitalists that why we chose flower.

There are a couple of reasons that we chose flower as our theme of our new service. When we go hiking or walk on streets, we can see beautiful flowers that are unknown to us. If you use a camera phone, it's natural to search for flowers after taking photos.

Birds are also one of candidates. But since birds are animals who always move, it's not easy to snap photos with normal cameras. Flowers are still life and it's easy for people to take close shots.

Our ultimate purpose is to answer questions 'What is this?'. Current searches rely on keywords. It requires you to describe objects in words. Users need to be active when they have questions. But as proverb says 'A picture is worth a thousand words.', it's not easy to describe what you see in words. If photos become queries, search would become more natural and easier.

In this context, vertical database is required for answering questions and only one sort of database is not enough. So, flower is the first step toward this ultimate purpose. We'll have many vertical database in future. Please give us your suggestions about our database (contact at gazopa.com). For example, ResearchBuzz suggests we should have a database of car.

GazoPa Bloom enters private beta

2010-03-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

We recently released flower community site, GazoPa Bloom. This site enables users to search for candidate flower names by uploading flower photos that are unfamiliar to them. GazoPa Bloom is not just a flower search site. Users can also share flower knowledge as well as flower photos.

When we released image search engine service, GazoPa.com, we received feedback that praised us for our achievement. But some feedback requested us to improve our service, because unexpected category of images appeared as search results. Since our image search is based on similarity and our database consists from images from web, mixture of different category of images is inevitable.

One of solution for this issue is to improve our technology. The second one is to let users select category of image when users upload images. Third one is to have a database that consists from one category of image. GazoPa Bloom has been developed to materialize this third approach.

Since GazoPa Bloom is still in private beta stage, I should admit that our image search technology and list of classification are not perfect and search results may not be so accurate. In order to fulfill this gap, we rely on power of users. GazoPa Bloom has a feature that asks other users to help users identify flowers. This can increase possibility to find an appropriate name for users.

GazoPa Bloom currently has very simple features i.e. search, share and discover flowers. We'll add more attractive features soon.

New Video : Get Inspired by GazoPa

2010-03-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

Web2.0 Expo

2010-03-13T01:06:00.000-08:00

We'll exhibit at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco on May4-5 this year, too. The Expo is short for one day this year and I'm not sure if it's because people is moving on to Web3.0.

I think we can announce a nice thing during the Expo. Free Expo Pass is available now (discount code EXPOPASS). See you again in San Francisco!

New Video : How to Get Inspired by GazoPa

2010-02-27T00:40:00.000-08:00

New Video : Find a present by GazoPa

2010-02-13T04:06:00.000-08:00

New video 'Find a present by GazoPa'.

New Video : Find a place by GazoPa

2010-02-12T23:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a new video 'Find a Place by GazoPa'.

New Video : Find Presentation Materials by GazoPa

2010-02-12T03:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a new video 'Find Presentation Materials by GazoPa'.

Three months has passed since our launch of open beta

2010-01-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Three months has passed since our launch of open beta. We received bunch of feedback and suggestion and not a few feedback were sent anonymously. I can't return my message to these anonymous ones directly, so I hereby express my thank sincerely.

First 100days are called as the presidential honeymoon and people avoid criticizing the president severely. So we may receive severe feedback from now on, but we always welcome your honest comment.

The biggest update during three months is image search on Twitter that were released last week. Images uploaded on Twitter may not have enough tags, so our similar search is a convenient tool for users. Twitter is a Real Time communication tool and its usage are changing rapidly, so we need to investigate further how we should provide these image search.

We're in the final development stage of our new web application. It's not only an image search but also .... I think we can release new service in private beta around the middle of February. We will not have a special event that Apple has today, but I hope you stay tuned.

New Features to search for Images of Twitter, Funny and Sports

2010-01-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

We just released new features that enables users to search for images of Twitter, Funny and Sports in GazoPa.com.

Images on Twitter
Twitter is getting popular as sharing images well as sharing comments. Since images on Twitter may not have enough tags, it's not easy to search for them afterwards. Now GazoPa allows users to search for similar images on Twitter. Click 'Twitter' link on the top line and latest images on Twitter are displayed in time line. Or click Twitter tab when you set any image as a search key. Images on Twitter that are similar to the search key are searched. Images uploaded by Twitpic, TweetPhoto, Fotolife and direct image URL can be searchable now and we will add images that are uploaded by other tools in future. (Update : Jan18. Due to limitation of Twitter API, we don't cover all images uploaded by Twitpic unfortunately.)

Funny Images
We realize that some users use GazoPa to search for funny images. So, we made new 'Funny' link and tab that allows these users to find Funny images more easily. An image has a power to make you laugh and relax. This new feature helps users to encounter funny images and make their life more enjoyable.

Sports Images
Sports images were displayed together with News images before and we received feedback that asked us to show sports images separately. We made new 'Sports' link and tab accordingly and this enables sports fan to reach desired images more easily. Sports images consists from valuable scenes and this feature helps users enjoy exciting moment.

Please give us your feedback to these new features contact (at) gazopa.com.

Do you like advertisement on image search?

2010-01-10T23:17:00.000-08:00

I was asked recently whether GazoPa includes advertisement. We have not included advertisement in any forms such as text or display ads. But an advertisement is one of major monetizing method, so we'll consider to include advertisements.

Google did trials to include advertisement in their image search and 'trials showed that text ads drove people away from conducting image searches, and Google dropped that idea' in 2006. But as far as I know, Google started including text advertisement into image search last year. It means they think users' behaviors have changed and they accept advertisement on image search. Advertisements are located on upper side of search results and I have never seen it is posted at the right side of search results as in web search.

Yahoo image also includes advertisement as well, but advertisement are located at the right side of search results. Bing has not included advertisement at their image search.

Google experimented display ads in 2008. But I have never seen them and Google might have not come to final decision yet. Although there are no major search engines who include display ads, display ads should be next trend, because this type of ads can attract more users than text ads. We can see display ads at Cooliris and these ads are inserted into images very naturally (Actually, these are video ads.). Questions are how relevant display ads can be. Our similar search technology can solve this relevancy issue, so I think we can show display ads naturally at GazoPa.com.

A Tip of Bookmarklet

2010-01-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

We received a feedback that asked us to provide a bookmarklet recently. Actually, we have been providing a bookmarklet since our private beta. I wonder why such feedback came to us and I found it's not easy for users to find a page for installing bookmarklet.

Our bookmarklet can be installed here and it's on the same page of plug-in. I think users may only know plug-in is downloadable there, but may not imagine that bookmarklet can be installed as well from the same page.

Bookmarklet is also very useful, especially when browsing pages with full of images. Just click bookmarklet and frames of images on the pages become blue. When you hover mouse on the images, 'similar search' button comes out.

In case of plug-in, right-click is required on each image. When there are lots of images on the same page and you want to use each image as a search query, it's a little bit troublesome to right-click on each image.

But if you use bookmarklet, just hover mouse on the images and a search button comes out. It's much more convenient.

For installing bookmarklet, click here or click 'Tool' on the top page and click 'Plug-in'.

The reason to search for images

2010-01-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

Why do you search for images? Image search is always quoted as the second largest search area next to web search. How big is the market? According to Quancast, unique visitors to images.google.com in the USA is 32 million, while unique visitors to google.com in the USA is 142 million. Since YouTube does not use Google subdomain, her data is not included in the list. YouTube has 85 million unique visitors in the USA, so Google images are the fourth largest Google product after google search, maps and YouTube.

32 million is a huge number and what do these users search at image search? I don't have a figure of Google, but according to Laurie Sullivan's blog, Todd Schwartz, group product manager of online services division for Bing at Microsoft mentioned that '40% of the overall image queries are related to commercial searches, such as travel and shopping, Microsoft found that another 44% of the searches for images related to science and nature and fashion, as well as tattoos. The remainder of searches related to entertainment, from movies and television to video games and celebrities.'

Image search Queries to the Bing

40% commercial searches, such as travel and shopping
44% science and nature and fashion, as well as tattoos
16% entertainment, from movies and television to video games and celebrities

It's interesting that not a few queries are related to science and nature. Is it because it's easy to understand science visually? It's also an eye-opening fact that people search for tattoos, although it may be easy to search for tattoo by image itself rather than by keyword.

Above data is that of image search by keyword. The number of Search by upload image is largest search queries at GazoPa. I'm not sure that the trend at GazoPa is same or similar to the keyword search. I'd like to share the figure of GazoPa in future.

Some questions about uploaded images

2009-12-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

We are asked by a couple of people if uploaded images are added to search index automatically. No. Images uploaded to GazoPa are not added to the search index, nor are they made accessible by other users automatically, unless users expressly choose to publish their photos and drawings. We added this clause in our FAQ.

Users can publish their drawings when they choose to do it. These drawings can be accessed by other users so that users can share nice search results with others.

We also received questions about rights of uploaded images from designers during our private beta. Some designers stated that our terms of service did not warrant their rights who upload their designed logo to check whether there is similar one or not. We reviewed our terms of service and clearly stated the rights of users here.

"3. User Content. User retains all copyrights and any other rights User already holds in Content which User submits, posts or displays on or through, GazoPa."

If there is any question about our service, please feel free to contact us contact (at) gazopa.com.

A Tip for better search results

2009-12-23T04:54:00.000-08:00

Our current service may not always satisfy all users at the first query. Human eyes are very sophisticated systems and it's a tough job for computer vision to catch up with them. Here are tips when you encounter search results you don't expect.

1. What you can do
1) Search Option
Try search options ; shape, layout and color.
2) Face Search
At current user interface, face search are not active at the first query. If you want to find same or similar faces, set 'face' option.
3) Combined Search
Enter any keywords so that combined search, image plus keyword search, works.

2. What we can do
1) Increase database
We think the more image data we have, the better results we can return. Our search is based on similarity, so results are affected by the size of the database. I experience the results from 10 million images are much better than that from one million images. We're continuously crawling the web and the searchable data is increasing. Try our service after some interval.

2) Limit types of query
Since our database consists of various images from the web and our algorithm purely rely on color and shape, different types of images are displayed as similar results. If type of database and queries are same, more relevant results can be returned. We're preparing new service that has specific database and I think search results would be more close to what you are expecting.

3) Improve image recognition
It's ideal to develop algorithm that can detect everything in images. I don't know how many years, decade and centuries are required to make it come true, but technology is moving forward.

How many images on the web?

2009-12-19T21:00:00.000-08:00

How many images are there on the web? No one knows exact figure. I have some data from photo sharing service as follows. Not all images on photo sharing services can be searchable, because some images are not open to public. Considering other photo sharing service such as Picasa and TwitPic and other sites that have images related news, shopping and travel etc, it may be said that four or five billion images are newly added to the web at least.

facebook 15 billion 220 million new photo per week May, 2009
flickr 4 billion 100 million new photo per month Oct, 2009
photobucket 7.5 billion June, 2009

Some images are piqued other people's curiosity such as images of Michael Jackson and Hudson river plane crash etc. Some images are too personal to be interested by general people. Photos of parties grab its participants' attention only, unless celebrities attend them. Obviously, the number of searchable images are important, but navigating users to their interested images are crucial as well. Some users are willing to see images related to shopping. Other users are eager to find images about latest news. Each user has different interest and we need to satisfy these variety of interests.

Current GazoPa.com is for general purpose use and is trying to satisfy as many types of people as possible. That's why we have filter options like news tab, video tab and flickr tab. It aims to be one stop solution to users. But we also think there should be specific type of sites that suit for specific demand. Besides improving functionalities of Gazopa.com, we're building special sites for specific needs. It'll be released at the beginning of next year. Stay tuned!

Why is it called GazoPa?

2009-12-19T04:50:00.000-08:00

When people heard our name 'GazoPa', some responded that it was weird. Maybe. It may sound weird for people other than Japanese. We are also asked often meaning of GazoPa during conferences, so I'd like to tell you why it's called GazoPa. GazoPa comes from Japanese as you may know and Gazo means pictures and Pa is a mimetic word that describes speed of action. So, GazoPa means pictures are displayed quickly. Speed of search is one of major characteristics of our service and our name shows this feature, although only Japanese can understand background of our name. Our intention to help users to find pictures in fast speed is implied in this name.

When people heard name of new service especially in the field of Web2.0, it always sounds weird, because major name are already registered or major domain names are taken by other people, so new service needs to avoid existed ones. Besides this, shorter names such as five or six characters are preferred in Web2.0, considering the number of keys users need to type. Simple names are already taken, so new names are made from a couple of words.

When people hear the current major Web2.0 services at the first time several years ago, it might sound weird as well. But when services are getting popular, no one say these names are weird, because these names are commonly used and people get accustomed to them. So, only history will prove if name is really weird or not.

One month has passed

2009-11-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

One month has passed since our launch of open beta. We had more than 40 thousands registered users at private beta stage. But much bigger number of users accessed our site during one month. We're very happy to know that our new way of searches such as search by upload image and by drawing has been tried by many new users. Thank you for honest and constructive feedback.

Some features did not work at the commencement of open beta, but latest flickr photos with creative commons licenses are already searchable. Our plugin was public at Mozilla Adds-on
as well and downloadable here.

Nice search results have been listed here. It enables users to enjoy similar search without uploading images and drawing pictures.

It's regret that our iPhone app still requires ID and PW entry. We're in a process of eliminating this.

We experienced a great first step and hope users continuous support.

Get started

2009-11-26T05:54:00.000-08:00

Uploading an image and drawing a picture is a typical start of our search. But there are many other things that you can do without preparing an image and a drawing.

1. Plugin
You can search for images by using images on other website. Right click on images and click 'Search image on GazoPa'. Plugin can be downloaded from our site or Mozilla site.

2. See flickr and news images
You can see latest flickr images that have creative commons or Flickr commons. Click 'Flickr' on the header of page. Set search option as 'today'. Images that are uploaded to flickr within 24hours are displayed. You can see latest news images as well when you click 'News' and set a time filter. But a time filter may not work well and very few images might be shown. Try it later.

3. See nice search results
Click 'more' on the top page of pickup photos. Lots of nice search results are listed. Click any of links and you can see nice search results.

Congratulations! Winner of iPod Touch is ...

2009-11-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

Thank you for applying to Tweet with GazoPa Win an iPod touch!. Our team checked all applications and voted to tweets that we liked. Since there were lots of nice and impressive tweets, our votes were divided and we could not select the winner at one time. So we voted to short list again.

Finally, we selected one tweet that all our team members liked.
Winner is this tweet 'I do similar search to try to find the purse...for my mom. @GazoPa iPod.'

Congratulations! You won iPod touch 32 GB. Since we do not know your email address and mail address, please contact us at contact (at) gazopa.com. If there is no response within one week, your right to get iPod touch will be extinguished and the right will be transferred to second candidate.

Thank you again for joining our campaign and enjoy our service.

GazoPa Image Collection

2009-11-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

You can also follow this on Twitter.
If you get nice search results, please let us know contact (at) gazopa.com.

Remark : Search results may vary when our database is updated.

Funny

Show your hand.
Super jump!
Support the moon.
Coffee shop?
How old are you?
I want you ...
Doppleganger
Surfing on the head
crane one's neck
Surfin' U.S.A.
I won!
I love ....
Your eyes only.
Don't stare at me.
Where do you want to go?
Good Job!
Spiral
Shake hands!

Public Figures

WALL-E
Sarah Palin
Isaac Newton
Galileo Galile
William Shakespeare
Sean Connery
Beatles
J.F.Kennedy
Mozart
Beethoven
Frankenstein
Lincoln & Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
George Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Albert Einstein

Paintings

Golden Proportion
Girl with a Perl Earring?
Skrik
Are you Mona Lisa?
Sunflowers
Vermeer?
This is Vermeer.

Nature

Eclipse
Cloud
Sun and snow
Cascading veils
Earth in hands
sun
One cannot teach a fish to swim.
a bolt from the blue
Beautiful sky
Full moon
Half moon
Who is in the picure?
Drawn by the earth
the largest planet
Butterfly effect?
Can you hear waterfalls?
Dawn
Sunset
Sunset 2
in the water
Hurricane

Flower

No rose without a thorn.
Do you know my name?

Animal

Panda
Birds of a feather flock together.
Panda family
The early bird catches the worm.
moo

World

Shanghai
Gozan no Okuribi
Japanese Castles
Moab, Utah
Ayers Rock
Schloss Neuschwanstein
Golden Gate Bridge
Ruinas de Sao Paulo
Itsukushima Shrine
Machu Picchu
Taj Mahal
Westminster Abbey
Asian tower
This is the world.
Temple of Heaven
This is Africa.
This is Italy.
pyramid
This is UK.
This is USA.
Eiffel Tower?

Sports

Swimmer
Fighting for a ball
Ping pong
So heavy.

Others

Diving
Do your nails to a nail.
Classic car
Give me a pose!
Der Kongress tanzt
Jumping
F1
Telegnosis
Astronaut4
Astronaut3
Astronaut2
Astronaut
the world in red
Launching
It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
oops-a-daisy
A rolling stone playｓ a guitar.
Never up, never in!
Mario!
New fish?
Jump, shoot, run ...
Victory waits on your fingers.
The wind changes as often as women.
Anonymous people
Hold the earth
Turn and jump.
Sign here, please.
Fly together
Fly into flying
Cornering
FACE/OFF
Gate to the other world
Life and death are the two faces of the same coin.
No, Non, Het
Change!
Eco drive?
The Strawberry Statement
vacation
Woman, like a shadow, flies one following and pursues one fleeing.
Order! Order!
Cheering fan
Which train do you take?
vertical stripes
prayer
Night scene
How big it is?
Win gold.
colorful
Are you ready?
Kiss you.
Quietness
Is it 10:10?
Are you hungry?
Where are you going?
Go for a drive?
flying
I'm also flying.
We're the flying guru.
Run!
Checkmate?
Can you see this?
Up and down
Fireworks!

Search by your drawing

moon or banana?
simple car
luxury car?
beautiful?

Characters

G a z o P a

Media Coverage

2009-11-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

New Fashion Search Engine Useful for Clothing Manufacturers and Buyers
TopTenWholesale.com Jan20, 2011
Gazopa Adds Stock Photos To Image Search Engine
Search Engine Land Jan18, 2011
A New Way to Search Stock Photos by GazoPa
My Stock Photography Jan17, 2011
"GazoPa" Silicon Valley Interview with Hitachi
Bruin TV Nov, 2010
Using images, rather than words, when searching to buy
internetRETAILER Aug25, 2010
The 5 Most Advanced Search Engines On The Web
makeuseof.com June22, 2010
Gazopa – search for images by similarity or keywords
Rarst.net Mar12, 2010
Gazopa: A Search Engine To Find Similar Images on the Web
Techie Buzz Jan19, 2010
Similar image search engine GazoPa – The most fun I’ve had in a long time…
TheNextWeb.com Jan19, 2010
How to Perform Better Image Searches with GazoPa
MakeTechEasier Nov26, 2009
Find Similar Images with GazoPa (Beta)
ResourceShelf Nov19, 2009
GazoPa: Similar Image Search Engine
digitalbuzz Nov15, 2009
Cool Websites and Tools
makeuseof.com Nov10, 2009
Want to find your doppelganger? Hitachi's similar image search engine is now open to the public.
CREATIVITY Nov9, 2009
GazoPa (in Chinese)
Computer Play (in Chinese) Nov7, 2009
GazoPa il motore di ricerca per comparare immagini (in Italian)
WIRED IT Nov6, 2009
Interview with Gazopa Personnel
The Storage Muse Nov5, 2009
GazoPa (in Thai)
CBIZ Review Oct30, 2009
Google’s At It Again: Releases Diluted Challenger to GazoPa
Marketing Pilgrim Oct28, 2009
GazoPa: Search Images By Similarity
makeuseof.com
Searching Similar Images Gazopa Launched Video Review
THE TECHNOLOGY CAFE Oct27, 2009
GazoPa Finds Images Similar to Uploads, Links, or Drawings
lifehacker Oct27, 2009
Similar Image Search Engine GazoPa Opens to Public Beta Testing
SearchEngineWatch.com Oct27, 2009
Gazopa Similar Image Search Enters Open Beta
Search Engine Journal Oct27, 2009
Similar Image Search Engine Gazopa Enters Open Beta
Wasingtonpost Oct27, 2009
Similar Image Search Engine Gazopa Enters Open Beta
TechCrunch Oct27, 2009
Want to search for your look-alike?
VentureBeat Apr14, 2009
12 Promising New Web Sites and Services
PCWorld Sep12, 2008
TC50: Gazopa Searches for Images Similar To Other Images
TechCrunch Sep10, 2008

Twitter New Account : GazoPafunny

2009-11-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

As private beta test users may remember, there was a page that users could publish their search results by drawing and other users could review these results by stars up to five. We could enjoy other users' fantastic results by their darwing. In open beta, users can publish their search results by drawing to Twitter and Facebook, but there is no one stop page that shows users all published works.

Twitter is a live stream and if you cannot catch tweets luckily, these tweets will buried in tons of new tweets. It's regret that wonderful search results cannot be found by other users. So, we created a new Twitter account GazoPafunny. When we find a nice search results by drawing and by image, we retweet them in our new account so that other users can browse them. No need to search Twitter stream by @GazoPa or GazoPa. Just access GazoPafunny and nice search results are waiting for you.

Search Results by Your Drawing can be posted to Twitter and Facebook

2009-11-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Search by drawing is a wonderful feature and now you can post search results by your drawing to Twitter and Facebook. Sign in before starting drawing a picture. Upload your drawing and click 'Publish'. You can see 'post to Twitter' and 'post to Facebook'. Click them and your search results by drawing is posted to Twitter or Facebook.

Users who have joined in private beta test might remember the ranking page of search by drawing. There is no ranking feature in current system, but your search results can be shared with others and would be retweeted.

You can also apply for 'Tweet with us Win an iPod touch campaign' with your search results by drawing. Try search by drawing and publish your results!

Tweet with GazoPa Win an iPod touch!

2009-11-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

Update : This campaign is finished. See detail of results here.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your access to gazopa.com that has been released open beta on Oct27. In order to celebrate our open beta, we decided to give users an opportunity to win an iPod touch. It’s very simple. Tweet the reason why you do similar image search or tweet your nice and funny search results. Nice tweets will be retweeted at @GazoPa and best one will win iPod touch! You can tweet as many times as you want. The number of ReTweet would be one of criteria for selection, but it’s not the only one criterion. Make sure all your tweets contain @Gazopa iPod.

There's two ways to enter:

1. Come up with your unique and creative phrase.

I do similar image search b'coz ........ @GazoPa iPod
I do similar image search when ........ @GazoPa iPod　

For example,
I do similar image search b'coz I want to find similar products @GazoPa iPod
I do similar image search when I want to find image for my blog @GazoPa iPod　

2. Tweet your nice and funny search results.

(New)Search by your drawing : Visit GazoPa site. Sign in before starting drawing a picture. Upload your drawing and click 'publish'. Click 'post to Twitter' and your search results by your drawing is published to Twitter.

For example (Search by Drawing),
Wow, http://www.gazopa.com/s/MKifHeDF8sjT

Visit GazoPa site and do similar search. There's a 'post to Twitter' link at the right side of search query. Click it and post your nice and funny search results to Twitter.

For example (Search by image),
Wow, check it out! http://www.gazopa.com/s/LtpvhsowF45r @GazoPa iPod

Tweet your nice phrase and search results by Nov15 24:00 Pacific Standard Time and get an iPod touch 32GB!
Wait for your great tweet!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update : 23:45 PST Nov4. Now you can publish search results by your drawing to Twitter. Please sign in before starting drawing a picture. Draw a picture and upload it. Click 'Publish' and 'post to Twitter'. Your search results by drawing is published. Try search by Drawing!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update : (Important) You can post search results to your Twitter account when your search query is an image from our database. When uploaded image and your drawing is a search query, search results that posted to your twitter account would not be visible from others.

We really love this video. Do you need a feature to post your search results by your drawing to your Twitter account?

Update : (Tips) You can select your search query from our database at random. Click 'Tools' at the top page and click 'Shuffle'. Images would be displayed at random and you can choose your query from these images.

New Video of Search by Plugin

2009-11-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

Here’s a new video of Search by Plugin. Actually, the feature of Plugin has not remained unchanged. But since the link to Plugin download page is not easy to be found, i.e. you can find it after clicking ‘Tool’ tab, although there is a link to Plugin at the bottom of page as well. We made this video for user’s better understanding of the location of Plugin link page.

Right-click on any image at other websites and similar images can be found at our site. It’s very intuitive way of searching images. Try it now!

Yes, you can do image plus keyword search

2009-11-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

We received some questions that ‘Hey, you guys, can I use keyword to filter results after using an image? ’ Of course, you can! To search for images by using image and drawing is a unique feature of our image search, but some results may not include users’ desired images and keyword could be a useful search option. Keyword box is located at the right side of search results page. Enter keywords and images are filtered by image plus keyword.

Yes, keyword box is actually located at the right side of image query area. But users still asked us whether image plus keyword search is available. This is an eye-opening feedback from users. This means current user interface may not be an intuitive one andwe need to review it to make UI more natural and useful.

Search by image plus keyword is a new type of search and users may not get accustomed to it yet. If so, it’s a matter of time and less and less question about search by image plus keyword would reach us. But there is also possibility that current UI may not be intuitive. We’ll continuously review it based on feedback from users.

To upload image or not to upload it, that is the question.

2009-10-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Search by uploaded image is one of unique features for gazopa. From search engine provider’s point of view, whether or not to accept uploaded image as a search key is a big issue. If I use a metaphor of baseball to describe these differences, to accept uploaded image is that a batter does not know what kind of ball the pitcher throw, a ball of baseball or a ball of football or a ball of valley ball etc. The batter needs to hit a ball even though a ball is not for baseball. On the contrary, using an indexed image with metadata as a search key rather than using uploaded image is that a batter understands a sign of catcher to pitcher and hits a ball. I think you understand how difficult it is to process uploaded image as a search key from this metaphor.

After reading untl this line, you may say ‘Oh Boys, I don’t care how your technology is better than others and I don’t want to hear about difficult thing your technology is doing. I only care what I can experience from it.’ Yes, you are right. You can enjoy iPod and iPhone even though you don’t know what technologies are used in these gadgets. User experience and whole system that support these experiences is important.

But if you think about cell phone, our strong point sounds more and more meaningful. As you feel in daily life, entering keyword may not be a comfortable experience. Are there any way that can simplify this user interface? Yes, here is the answer. Each cell phone has a camera these days. Imagine, if you just take a picture and use it as a search key, how simple it is? But to take a picture is not enough for starting searches. You need to upload your image from your cell phone. To upload image becomes a critical point now. I think you understand how wonderful feature search by upload is. It’s very intuitive and natural way to use your image as a search key. It’s not a story of technology. It’s a new experience that technology can bring to you.

Don’t forget registration before using iPhone app

2009-10-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

You don’t need to log in when you use GazoPa.com, but please be careful that log in is still required when you use our iPhone app. We plan to remove sign in/sign up process from our iPhone app, but it takes time to do it. Sorry for giving you inconvenience. You can create your account here.

Thank you for your feedback

2009-10-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

After launching open beta yesterday, we received a bunch of feedback from users. We sincerely appreciate your support. One feedback helped us to find a typo at our website and we fixed it immediately. Others pointed out some terms on our website overlapped. But unfortunately, we cannot re-confirm it in our environment. We’re not sure if it’s due to difference of version of Firefox.

We could communicate with users who sent us feedback during private beta, because everyone needed to log in for using our service. But now feedback will be sent to us anonymously if you don’t log in. If you need to communicate with us directly (To be honest, it’s us who want to communicate with users directly), please sign in before sending us feedback. Or use contact(at)gazopa.com.

GazoPa enters open beta.

2009-10-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

We’re pleased to announce you that GazoPa enters open beta just now. More than one year has passed since its launch of private beta at TechCrunch50 in 2008 and over 40,000 users participated in private beta testing. Thank you very much for your valuable feedback.

Here is a new video.

Although we are public now, we are still in beta stage. So your continuous support would be highly appreciated.

A Tip of Search by drawing

2009-10-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

Search by drawing is a pretty unique feature at GazoPa.com. Since our image search is based on similarity, images can be searched by your drawing. If your image search only enables you to search for same photos, your drawing would not be regarded as similar to photos, because a drawing is totally different from a photo. Search by drawing is a unique feature of similarity based image search.

Default of search by drawing is a shape option, so images that have similar shape would be displayed at first. So if you are not satisfied with results, please try other search option such as layout and standard, because these options use color together with shape.

A Tip of Combined Search, image plus keyword

2009-10-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

GazoPa can search for images using image itself and does not reply on metadata. But it does not mean GazoPa ignores keyword search and keyword search is available as well. Keyword search is useful especially at filtering search results. If you upload an image and get search results, you can filter these search results by keyword. That means both image and keyword is used as search key. This is also a unique feature that GazoPa provides.

There are feedbacks that request us to have an option to filter a specific domain only. This would be a useful feature, but unfortunately, domain specific search is not available now, although it’s in our to-do list. Alternative way is to use combines search, image plus keyword. If you want to see images on amazon.com after uploading an image, enter ‘amazon’ into keyword box. Images at amazon would be displayed. Try this combined search until domain specific search is available.

A Tip of Face Search

2009-10-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

To search faces is one of use cases that people use image search. To search for famous actor’s faces, faces of people in the news and even your own faces in various kinds of social webs etc.

When you do search at GazoPa, whatever ways you take such as by uploading images, using images in news category, face search is not active at the first search. Search results are based on similarity of whole images rather than those by face search. So, if you want to do face search, you need to set ‘face’ as a search filter. After setting ‘face’ option, face search would be active.

If you upload an image with faces at the first time and search results may not satisfy you, please set ‘face’ option and try it again. You can get different results.

If you upload a photo that has your face and there are no results that have your faces, it might be that images that have your faces are not public. If you know websites that have images of your faces, it’s because we have not crawled websites that have your images. Please be patient until our database grows.

A Tip of Plug-in Search

2009-10-22T11:58:00.000-07:00

‘I don’t have images to upload.’ ‘I’m not good at drawing pictures.’ ‘What should I do at GazoPa?’

Don’t worry. You can use shuffle feature that I wrote yesterday and news related images, Flickr’s images are displayed randomly. But is there anything you can do if you’re not at GazoPa?

Yes, you can use images on other websites and can search for similar images at GazoPa if you have installed our Plug-in in your Firefox. It’s very convenient tool when you want to see other similar images at e-commerce sites, news sites, Google images etc. Just right-click on the image and click ‘Search Similar Images to this Image on GazoPa.’ Similar images are in front of you.

(How to download it)

Click ‘Tools’ at top page

Click ‘Plug-in’

Install Plug-in and restart Firefox

(How to use it)

Right-click any images you want to search

Click ‘Search Similar Images to this Image on GazoPa.’

You can get search results at GazoPa.

You can also download it at Firefox Add-ons page, although we’re waiting for being reviewed.

If you are not Firefox users, you can use our Bookmarklet instead of Plug-in.

(How to download it)

Click ‘Tools’ at top page

Click ‘Plug-in’

Install Bookmarklet

(How to use it)

Go to pages with images you want to search

Click on the Bookmarklet

Frames of images on the page becomes blue. "GazoPa search" button appears in a image when mouse cursor is over the image.

Click "GazoPa search" button and then you can get search results.

A Tip of Shuffle Images

2009-10-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

Some of old beta test users might have thought ‘’Where is ‘I’m searching for luck.’ button?’’ when they saw our new design recently released. Don’t worry. It’s not totally deleted and it’s live as ‘Shuffle’ link. You can see ‘Shuffle’ link after clicking ‘Tools’ tab at the top page. Click ‘Shuffle’ and images at our database are displayed randomly. Shuffle has the same feature with previous ‘I’m searching for luck’. Any kinds of images are shuffled at our database. Since we have more than 60 million images at our database and 30 images are displayed at one time, you can encounter same image one time per 2 million times theoretically. Doesn’t it sound like a fateful encounter? If you find an interesting image, just click it. Your trip inside various images will start.

A Tip of Search for Flickr Photo

2009-10-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Searching for reusable photos at Flickr is one of nice features we released last week. I mentioned that time filter within today is coming soon, but it actually works for Flickr’s photos. Here is a tip to use this filter.

Click ‘Flickr’ at the top line of first page

Reusable images from Flickr are displayed

Set time filter ‘’Today’’ and click ‘search’

Reusable photos that are published today are displayed

Click ‘Shuffle images’ if you want to see more images

This filter enables you to browse latest reusable photos at Flickr easily. Try it!

New design has been released.

2009-10-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

We changed our design of our top page i.e. only search by upload image is shown as search way. Search by drawing, keyword search is come out when these tabs are clicked. These design changes comes from data of private beta that most of searches are from upload image. Some feedback mentioned it was not easy to grasp what they can do at our site at a glance, so this change will make search flow simpler than before.

Information about images such as original page, image URL, size etc are popped up when mouse is hovered on the image at results pages. Some users want to see images only rather than information about images. This enables users to see images easily at large.

News and Flickr category

News category is added as a filter. It allows you to search for images related to news. Flickr tab allows you to search for images that can be reusable. Images can be filtered in accordance with its creative commons licenses. We received not a few feedbacks that asked us to show if images can be reusable. This new filter makes image search more convenient.

Time Filter

Images can be filtered in accordance with times images are taken. This would be a useful option to search for images. Although we’re continuously crawling the web, our database had not been updated promptly. So this caused user not to find latest images at our site. We’re going to refresh our database one time per day at least in near future and you can find latest images after that. Filters within a day and within a week will be coming soon.

There is still a feedback saying our database is small. Yes, you are right. We have more than 60 million images on the web. This number is bigger as similar search in view of technology, but it’s small as general image search. The number of data we have is increasing, so please be patient.

Your feedback would be welcomed.

Two Events at UC Berkeley

2009-10-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

We’ll exhibit at two events UC Berkeley this month and next month. One is The Berkeley Digital Media Conference (>play) on Oct17 and the other is Technology Expo 2009 on Nov6.

This is our second time to participate in >play. After exhibiting the event last year, we were contacted not a few students from UC Berkeley and we met people at other conferences who saw us at >play. Although it’s not a huge conference like ones at Moscone center, but it’s a friendly and comfortable event. We look forward to seeing old and new friends.

It’s the first time for us to attend Technology Expo 2009. I think we can show our new service that will be released soon.

See you at UC Berkeley!

Looking for iPhone Developer in project

2009-09-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

We’re looking for an iPhone developer in project base. Our current iPhone app was selected as a winner of Best Infotainment & Community at Mobile Content 2009.

- In-depth knowledge and prior experience developing iPhone applications
- In-depth knowledge of Objective C
- In-depth knowledge of Cocoa Touch
- In-depth knowledge of iPhone SDK
- In-depth knowledge of Interface Builder

Location: Santa Clara, CA

Project Term: three month duration

Hours: 10-15 hours/week

Please see this in detail.