A Sales Clerk You May Like
There are plenty of e-commerce sites competing for holiday dollars but two new sites deserve special attention — not so much for what they sell, but for how they present their merchandise.
Like.com and myShape.com are using interesting technology to help shoppers find exactly what they're looking for. Like.com lets you perform a visual search by an item's appearance while myShape sells women's clothing with choices tailored to only one person in mind: you or the woman for whom you are shopping.
From a technology perspective, Like.com is incredibly innovative. It's operated by Riya, a company I last wrote about in February, when it launched a product that lets you organize photos through pattern recognition.
The technology - which actually recognizes people in photographs - is quite remarkable, but as is sometimes the case with cutting edge technology, the company wasn't able to turn it into a profitable business. Now it is trying again by using similar technology for a totally different type of business.
The idea behind Like.com is that you can find an item you like and have the site look for items that have similar characteristics when it comes to shape and color. It's not just a database of properties; it's an actual visual search.
The software behind the site breaks the item down to a mathematical representation and compares items to help you find ones that are similar. The site creates what the company calls a "digital signature that describes the photo's contents and enables a more accurate search for similar looking items and products."
If you click on a pair of shoes that you like, for example, you can have the site look for similar shoes. But perhaps you're interested in a different color. If you select the items and change the color, it immediately goes out and looks for items with a similar shape with the color you selected.
What it shows you is not just a re-colorized version of the same pair of shoes but other pairs of shoes that really are the color you selected. It's one way to find similar items at varying prices. I clicked on a $150 pearl necklace and found a $70 necklace that looked very similar.
Like even lets you look for certain aspects of an item. Let's say you like the clasp on a handbag or the dial on a watch. You can draw a box around that aspect of the item and the site will go out and look for other items that have similar clasps or dials. It's really a remarkable piece of technology.
Whether there is any more of a market for this site than there was for Riya's photo organizing technology remains to be seen. I don't usually take sides when it come to companies I write about, but I do hope these folks find a way to stay in business because, ultimately, this technology could have some very interesting uses as it evolves and becomes more sophisticated.
MyShape.com isn't quite as high-tech as Like, but it nevertheless demonstrates a creative way that the web can help users focus in on the types of products that they need. MyShape is an online women's clothing store but instead of presenting you with virtual racks of clothing for every woman, the shop only displays clothing that fits the customer and the customer's preferences.
to hear Larry Magid browse the
myShape web shop with CEO Louise J. Wannier.
It does that by asking women to fill out an extensive questionnaire that includes entering their measurements from 20 parts of their anatomy including shoulder, bust, waist, high hips, hips, one thigh, upper arm (bicep), arm length, rise of pants and more.
It also asks women to state their preferences on whether they like to wear clothes that are snug, close to the body, comfortably fitted or loose and flowing. It also wants to know if they wear their skirt above the knee, slightly above the knee, at the knee, below the knee, mid-calf or at the ankle.
Once you've entered all of that information, myShape builds a clothing store just for you. It has a variety of items in it but there are a couple of things you can count on. For one thing, everything will fit. Because it has your measurements, it knows what items to present and it doesn't just base them on the size on the label.
The software behind the site take into consideration the fact that different designers and clothing manufacturers have a different concern of size. What one company might call a 2 another might mark as a 4 or a 0. That way, women get clothing that fits, regardless of how a particular company sizes its outfits.
The site has a "shop for her" feature that allows women to send an e-mail to friends or family members who want to purchase a gift. Thankfully, the person who does the shopping doesn't get to see the woman's measurements but he or she can rest assured that anything purchased will fit and will probably be consistent with the recipient's preferences. If not, myShape will take it back.
Both Like.com and myShape.com are at the cusp of a new development which some people are calling "Web 3.0" – sites that can act as personal advisors using artificial intelligence to anticipate what people need or want based on databases that truly understand the user.
These sites may be primitive compared to what some people envision, but they do offer us a glimpse of a future in which each of us will have intelligent agents doing our bidding.
In the interim, I'll be happy just to find the tools I need to get through my own shopping this holiday season.
A syndicated technology columnist for over two decades, Larry Magid serves as on air Technology Analyst for CBS Radio News. His technology reports can be heard several times a week on the CBS Radio Network. Magid is the author of several books including "The Little PC Book."
By Larry Magid
