Instopix is a program for Instant Messenger users that automatically shows pictures related to what they are talking about.

People can look at a friend's Instopix page to visually see what they are talking about with other people, as it happens.

Buissness model

If people talk about bands or TV shows, clicking the images brings people to Amazon, where they can buy related stuff. 

Now or never

In the heat of a conversation Instant Messenger users don't have time to fire up their web browser, think and look up every little thing that they talk about.

We get infomation instantly so that this is no longer a problem.

Ambient awareness

Instopix lets people get a feel for whats going on, in seconds ... or even split seconds. With a casually look I can see that hype is building up amongst my geeky sci-fi watching friends for Doctor Who, meaning I don't miss out when its back on TV again!

Business Model

Amazon referals

Semantic Desktop solutions provider

As well as revenue being generated by cover art images linked to shopping on Amazon.com (for related CDs, Books and Movies), we are looking to expand and establish ourselves as a solution provider of Semantic Web and Semantic Desktop solutions for corporate clients, to stop time from being wasted in the office, trying to find that related document or email that you JUST SAW but can't find...

Underlying magic

ThoughtTrail Metadata Framework

We want to integrate all infomaton on the computer so we devised, the ThoughtTrail platform. ThoughtTrail can be thought of as a new kind of associative file system that any program can take advantage of, to say: find out that a bunch of documents are probably related, or determine if something is probably spam or not. Or just a place to store tags for documents and webpages.

Centralised personal data repository

The grand vision is to put all the users infomation in one place, and understanding how it inter-relates. ThoughtTrail empowers new kinds of applications like Instopix leveraging little bits of Artificial Intelligence, easily and repeatedly.

How Instopix works

Inputs Instant Messenger conversations

We take the text of peoples instant messenger converations with plugins for all the popular instant messenger clients.

Finds terms

We use various Artificial Intelligence techniques to identify phrases in these conversations

Gets Google Images

Then we download the Google Images for each of those phrases and visualise them

Feedback

Instopix automatically uses feedback to become more accurate: if it's ambigious which image is probably the best, we show 3 possible images for the user to quickly choose from. If they dont pick one, we choose one randomly. The feedback is sent to a web server that keeps tabs on what the best images are for a specific phrase.

Realtime Implcit Lead-Ins

Instopix is just the start. The ThoughtTrail vision can be applied to more than instant messenger programs. Figuring out what the user is trying to do, no matter what tools they are using at the time, just makes sense. Adding referals if any are availible after providing content is a superiour advertising mechanism. Showing adverts to people that don't like them, it wasted time and money. Instopx is the start of a new advertising platform, but not as we know it.

Instopix allows ThoughtTrail to rapidly establish itself in the domain of contextual search, and as a result, all of search.