I came across a cool web app called Retrievr today, and honestly, I’m having trouble introducing it in any way other than by saying that it’s pretty damn cool. There’s a little Flash interface that lets you draw a sketch. Retrievr analyzes it and searches Flickr for the closest matching picture. You have to try it to really understand. It’s almost eerie that you can tell why every result was chosen.

Now, it’s still obvious that image recognition technology needs more time to mature, but this is the first time I’ve thought to myself, “wow….” I’ve never seen image analysis continously give recognizable results. It’s like the first time I played a fully 3D video game like Super Mario 64. It was just different than anything I had ever played before.