On 1st September, we will be shutting down the PlinkArt servers. We’re sure (like us) you’ll be a little sad to see PlinkArt go, but shutting down Plink will allows us to put all our energy into making Google Goggles the best visual search experience around. Already we’re hard at work bringing ideas from our time at Plink into Goggles, from core computer vision algorithms to app UI design. If you haven’t tried Goggles yet, go check it out!
PlinkArt users will notice that we’ve just pushed a new version of the PlinkArt app to the Android Market. There is nothing new in this version, other than some information on the shutdown and an easy install link to Google Goggles.
We hope everyone got lots of enjoyment out of playing with PlinkArt. We certainly had fun making it (and even learned a thing or two about art along the way). Visual search is not going away, and we’re excited to part of building the future with Goggles 
All the best,
Mark & James
Posted in: Misc.
We have some very exciting news – Plink has just been acquired by Google.
We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today. Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up.
For Plink as a company, it’s been a short but exciting ride – only four months since our public launch. We shot past 50,000 users in just four short weeks, and we’ve continued to get great feedback and suggestions over the months since then. For all our users: nothing is changing. PlinkArt will continue to be available for download and work as it currently does today. However, we won’t be updating the app and will instead focus our development efforts on Google Goggles, so you’ll see new functionality appearing there in the future.
The visual search engines of today can do some pretty cool things, but they still have a long long way to go. We’re looking forward to helping the Goggles team build a visual search engine that works not just for paintings or book covers, but for everything you see around you. There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision – it’s going to be a lot of fun!
All the best,
Mark & James
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What is Plink?
Plink makes visual search engines that let you find out more about something just by taking a photo of it. Our first product, PlinkArt, enables you to identify paintings and artworks with just a snap from your phone’s camera. Once recognized, you can read information on the artwork and artist, share your favourite pieces with friends or even order a print to hang on your wall.
What will happen to the PlinkArt app on my phone?
Nothing is changing for now, and PlinkArt will continue to work as usual. In future however, we’ll be shifting our development efforts towards Google Goggles, so you’ll see new functionality appearing there.
What will you be working on in future?
We’re still going to be working on visual search. Everything that makes your search experience better, from developing core visual search technology to refining the way results are presented. You’ll see our future work show up in Google Goggles.
Posted in: Misc.
It’s now been four months since PlinkArt had its public launch on the Android Market. We’ve had our head down working on exciting things (stay tuned!), but it’s already well past time for an update on what’s happened since launch. It’s been an exciting time for us at Plink!
We’ve had a phenomenal reception on the Android Market. Things started with a bang thanks to our prize in the ADC2. Even better, in mid-December we were selected as an official featured app on the Market, which catapulted us past 50,000 users in less than four weeks. We’re still growing, and it’s great to see more and more users trying Plink every day. Android users are very engaged, and we’ve had a constant stream of thoughtful feedback. So thank you everyone!
Image Search – A New Kind of Popular
Now that we’ve been around for a while, we’ve accumulated lots of data about the kind of things users have been doing with the app. One of the fascinating things has been the dramatic difference between what’s popular for visual search, compared to text search.
Our most popular text queries are what you might expect – big name artists like Picasso, Dali, Monet and other favourites:
On the other hand, many of these artists aren’t even in the top 10 for image search. Instead we see artists like Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish art deco painter whose name you may not recognise, but whose paintings you certainly will:
The Mona Lisa still comes out on top, but the diversity of what users search for with images is strikingly higher than with text. This is the top ten:
We started Plink because we wanted to bring the power of visual search to everyone. It’s very cool to see users playing with the technology and finding new and interesting things that they wouldn’t have come across otherwise. So – a successful beginning for PlinkArt. However, visual search is about more than just art, and we think this is gradually going to become a natural component of more general search engines. Just like with our painting rankings, it’s going to help people find all sorts of things that aren’t so easy to get to with text alone. That’s what keeps us excited about building visual search engines. That and the fact that it’s a lot of fun!
Posted in: Misc.
We’re really delighted to say that Android users chose PlinkArt as the best reference app in the Android Developer Challenge. At about 10pm last night, we got the email:
Congratulations! Your application, Plink Art, was chosen by users and judges as the #1 winner in the Education/Reference category. You’ve won $100,000!
We’re really happy that users liked the app. We’ve already had loads of suggestions of new things people would like to see in PlinkArt, and the Android prize means that we can keep working to make cool new features.
Now that the ADC2 is over, we’ve released PlinkArt on the main Android Market. It’s completely free, and you can get it just by searching in the Market app, or by scaning the 2D barcode in the sidebar of this blog. So give it a try, and tell us what you think!
–The PlinkArt Team
Posted in: Misc.
We just got an email saying that PlinkArt has been selected for the finals of the Android Developer Challenge. Huzzah! We were left wondering about our fate for a while because Gmail put the “Congratulations, your application was selected” email in the spam folder. Understandable because of all the fake competition spam, but a little scary. I wonder how many job offers and winning lottery tickets might be lying in people’s spam folders?
Anyhow, now for a bit of frantic server scaling to make sure we can handle the load from the finals
Posted in: Misc.
Tagged: adc2
Android Developer Challenge apps went live this morning. The PlinkArt servers are humming a little louder. Unfortunately app downloads are random and there is no way to leave feedback for developers within the judging app – but if you are lucky enough to get PlinkArt and would like to leave a comment for the PlinkArt team, just post something below.
Posted in: Misc.
When we demonstrate PlinkArt to friends, there isn’t always a famous painting nearby to take a picture of. So we thought we’d put together a few sample images that you can use to test the app.
Without a painting handy, so far everyone we’ve shown the app to has taken a photo of a friend instead. PlinkArt only knows about famous paintings, so it returns the most similar one it can find. Given that European painters spent hundreds of years painting religious figures, normally this is a saint – except in the case of one poor fellow who apparently bears a close resemblance to a Campbell’s Soup Can. (Really, for these searches the system knows that it hasn’t found a good match, so we could return a “nothing found” page. But people were having so much fun figuring out what famous portrait they looked like that we decided to leave it in!)
So far, the first thing most people do with PlinkArt is to take a picture of have done is to take
Posted in: Using Plink.
Welcome to the PlinkArt blog. This is the place to look for all the latest news about PlinkArt. Right now we are waiting for Google to release the judging application for the Android Developer Challenge so that people can start playing with the app!
Posted in: Misc.
