Like.com - a really big idea!

New technology is great. But figuring how this technology can actually make a difference to people's lives - and therefore acquire monetary value - is not always easy.Riya.com is one such fascinating story. A few months ago, I heard of this guy - Munjal Shah - who had developed a 'face recognition' software. It sounded like a cool thing, but I never tried downloading or using or finding out more about it.I mean I mentally bookmarked it as 'must try one day' because the thought of organising my digital photos weighs on my mind every now and then. But I just never get around to it.But that was Riya 1.0. Ten months later, this post by Peter Rip of Crosslink Capital (which funded Riya) makes perfect sense: ... we had to have a sound business model... Munjal knew first-hand the mortality rate of dot-coms (and more recent social networking and photo sites) that preceded him. We have one and it will be apparent in due course.Well, here it is. And what a superb and unique model! Riya has just launched a website called Like.com. Like.com is the world's first visual search engine. We focused visual search on items that are hard to describe linguistically. Like solves this problem. All you have to do is a "Likeness search" on a photo and Like will show you items that look similar.