2008
tool · vision · systems
ImageWiki
Open-source visual search and image-as-interface, from 2008 — years before it was default.
ImageWiki (shipped as **Imawik**) was a 2008 open-source experiment in visual information sharing. The idea: real images as the primary unit of communication for a wiki — visual matching standing in for hyperlinks and text. Ruby/Merb, BSD-licensed, a small team collaboration, hosted originally at imagewiki.org.
Two decades old now, and mentioned here mostly for the receipts: makerlab has been working on visual search and image-as-interface since well before ML-based image understanding was the default assumption. The linked Vimeo is the original Imawik commercial.