Recently, the Twitter feed of
Idee Inc. founder Leila Boujnane
read, "
Reviewing resumes. Nice way to finish a working day." For many techies hungry to be on the cutting edge, reading those words would be a nice way to start the next phase of their working career. Idee, now hiring, is one of the most interesting and perhaps most unsung Toronto innovation success stories around.
"We are image search pioneers," says Boujnane. "Our image search innovations have been quite substantial. That said, it has not always resulted in immediate corporate acceptance. But that has been changing as we gain a better understanding of our potential clients' needs and how to introduce them to technology they have never seen before or even thought was possible."
Founded in 1999, the company works on visual search technology, and so far every picture technology it has created is worth a thousand words of praise. Piximilar can search for images that share attributes (colour, content, composition) with an image. PixID is a print image monitoring technology that can track the use of images to cut down on piracy. Most recently it introduced TinEye, a visual search engine that can take an image and find out where it's being used online -- even if it's been modified.
The company has attracted such high-profile clients as Adobe Photoshop, Associated Press and Getty Images. "We just landed eBay as a customer and that's a true testimonial to the capabilities of our image search technologies (and our team)," Boujnane says. "Suffice it to say that I am looking at increasing the size of my team by 50 per cent in the coming months, ideally before the year end
."
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Leila Boujnane, Co-founder and CEO, Idee Inc.