User:Fuelbottle/multimediasearch

Multimedia search is an idea I have for what I think would be a cool wikipedia feature, though it might not be practical to implement anytime soon.

Multimedia search would work by uploading a picture or sound file or specifying a web address where it can be found. By using pattern recognition, wikipedia could try to recognize the submitted file and find a corresponding article. Many new mobile phones comes with large screens,web browsers, cameras and ability to record sounds. This could be useful for finding information about things.

For example, I see a car and want to know more about it. I then take a picture of the car and submit it to wikipedia. Wikipedia searches through it's database of images and find a match so I can read an article about it. This could be useful for identifying plants, animals, buildings and other things one might come across.

For sound, it could be useful for identifying songs(which album, group...), birds and maybe other things.