Vodafone demos visual search

Vodafone is showing off a service called Otello at CeBIT in Germany that uses images, instead of words, to search the web.

Users can snap an image using a cell phone’s camera and send it in a message to the service. They will then get regular search results back about whatever was in the photo. For example, pictures of a newspaper, billboard, book cover, or place can be taken and sent to Otello to find out more about them.

Otello is currently undergoing trials with a German newspaper that lets users find out more about a story by taking a snapshot of an image in the article and sending it off. Sadly, there are currently no plans on bringing the service to a larger market.

Image-based searching has been expected for some time now, so it’s great to see services finally popping up taking advantage of better cameras and faster internet connections on today’s mobile phones to allow them to perform visual searches. There is a huge market for this, so hopefully Vodafone and other carriers can perfect the technology and bring it to the masses soon.