This month Picture Network International Inc, Arlington, Virginia is launching the Seymour System, an intelligent on-line image resource that reduces the time spent combing through stacks of slides, stock agency books, limited CD-ROMs and laborious on-line searches from hours to seconds. It features an intelligent search engine and a library of images and enables people to search on-line through nearly a quarter of a million images from stock agencies and image libraries. Customers ask for pictures in their own words. The system uses a natural language processor that enables it to decipher the subtle relationships between parts of speech. When a request is typed into Seymour’s Query screen, the system’s smart engine deduces the meaning of the inquiry, interprets the idea, and responds with an array of visual suggestions from its database of stock images. The firm says it searches through hundreds of thousands of pictures in a few seconds and selects the images that best fit the inquiry. All of the images are indexed by every descriptive component within the photograph, by the photographic qualities, and by the feeling of the picture. The words used to index the image are then put into an on-line knowledge base, so that each photograph is categorised and can be accessed by a wide range of descriptions. Seymour’s transaction services save time and money by simplifying the processes of experimenting with pictures within documents and negotiating licensing agreements, it claims. The system can be directly accessed from the user’s desktop and requires a Macintosh Quadra series computer with at least 12Mb RAM; Macintosh System Software 7.1; at least 10Mb hard disk and 24-bit video display board. Use of a 14.4 baud or faster modem is recommended. The Seymour System will be at an introductory membership price of $175 per assigned computer. Subsequently, a fee of $1.50 per minute will be charged which is equal to about $20 for the average image search. Additional computer installations within the same division are $150 each.
