Thread: Beyond text-based search

We have been bound to type words for a search. Though new paradigms are coming up in the search domain, which will not bound a user to text based search, the system will be able to comprehend the query based on voice or image. Not only voice, a user could be able to transmit all audio stream or pass an image to get results about them. Transmitting an audio stream will be like a feature calledTrackID, that's available with Sony Ericsson mobile phones, whereby a song's snippet is transmitted to a server to fetch back information about the song. Working around the same concept, if a user says a few words from Lenin's speech, he would be able to listen to the whole speech as result.



The image based search is already present with most of the search engines, but is based on tags associated with the image and thus leading to inappropriate results at times. Development work is underway to incorporate facial recognition as a method for image search. For example when you try to find a watch that is similar to the one you have a digital photo of, the result can lead to informatio.n about the watch details and where a user can buy it from.