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Image Citation and Reverse Search with TinEye

March 18, 2011, 11:00 am

By Jason B. Jones

LensesAustin Kleon, author of Newspaper Blackout and curator of one of the most interesting tags on Tumblr, recently posted a link to this helpful chart, designed by Pia Jane Bijkerk and Erin Loechner, on whether or not to post an image to the internet.

The chart suggests Evernote as a way to manage images you’ve found online, which is obviously advice we can get behind.

Image citation flowchart

Click for full-size

It also recommends a service I’d never heard of called TinEye, which is a reverse search engine. Unlike Google Images, Flickr’s search page (prior post), or a service such as Wylio (prior post), which allow you to search for photos based on keywords or tags, TinEye tries to find the actual image itself. The site even asserts that it can find cropped or modified versions of an image on the web. Here’s a demonstration of how it works:

I suspect the main use-case for TinEye is for people looking to police their copyrighted images, but it is, as Pia Jane Bijkerk and Erin Loechner suggest, potentially useful for helping to discover the source of images you’d like to use, or are otherwise interested in research. The site offers a bookmarklet that’s compatible with the various browsers.

The limitation of the site is that its database is still pretty small. TinEye asserts that there are nearly 2 billion images in its database, which sounds awesome until you remember that Flickr alone has more than 4 billion. I tried using the service with some of the images we’ve used at ProfHacker, and came up empty. Then I tried using some of the publicity stills for Star Wars: The Clone Wars that I keep at Flickr. TinEye did a little better here: It found matches for the images from Seasons 1 and 2, although not all of the current season–and while it found some matches, it definitely didn’t find all the instances of these pictures online.

To some extent, TinEye reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s notorious comments about a walking dog: Although the results aren’t great (yet), it’s amazing that it works at all. The people who make TinEye, idée labs, have a variety of other experimental image-search options to play with, too.

Do you have a better reverse-image search solution? Let us know in comments!

Photo by Flickr user robynneblume / Creative Commons licensed

 
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  • jabberwocky12

    Are you really using this tragic situation to advertise your company?  (Yes, while Moodle is a free and open source LMS, it doesn’t address the important issue of the clickers, and the focus of your post, with the link, appears to be on your company’s “solutions.”)  Shame!

  • http://hiresteve.com/ Steve Foerster

    It was a little crass, but at least it wasn’t irrelevant.  For example, I didn’t know that Moodle is fully Section 508 compliant, and I was glad to learn that.

  • raza_khan

    I believe that this may be the biggest and if not one of the biggest challanges for the faculty members.  We are expected to keep with the technology such as e-books, e-homework assignments such as (Mastering or OWL), podcasts (audio / video), lecture capture but yet as faculty, it is not our role to ensure that any, some or all of these non-traditional tools of lecture deliverability are ADA complaint.   HOWEVER, it is the instittution’s responsibilty and that is where I see our biggest challange as faculty in to not only “play” with these tools but then try to figure out what tools are non-ADA compliant and then work our way around it in a way that we do not single those out students and grade every one fairly.   Of course, some of these tools such as lecture capture are meaningless to a blind student in a chemistry course where the use of whiteboard or chakboard is heavily used by the faculty member.

    I did have a blind student about 10 years ago in my class and she was afforded an intrepreter but it has to be a perfect relationship between those two people in both lecture and lab setting for this to work.

    Raza
    _____________________
    Raza Khan, Ph.D.
    Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com

  • http://www.wikispaces.umb.edu Christian

    eGrade isn’t a full-fledged LMS, so bringing Moodle into the discussion is not entirely relevant–though it may help to assuage any worries MoodleRooms customers may have.

    Please note that Section 508 compliance is a start but doesn’t mean a product is both accessible and usable. Our evaluation of LMS products, commercial and open source, have found that many Section 508 compliant systems are still not as accessible as they could be–though they met basic 508 requirements.

  • http://twitter.com/LSUMoodleMan Buddy Ethridge

    Frank’s reply was taken directly from the MoodleRooms’ FAQ.  While I tend to agree that this might not have been the best place to advertise a company, I do believe that bringing Moodle into the conversation is relevant, and MoodleRooms does do a fantastic job of attempting to keep Moodle as compliant as possible.  The lawsuit stems from the use of “clicker” technology, a technology that we use here at LSU in conjunction with Moodle.  

    Compliance across technology is an extremely hot topic at present, as more and more Universities take note and realize that ADA compliance is not “optional”.  I am serving on a panel that will be presenting and discussing compliance and accessibility in Moodle at the upcoming West Coast MoodleMoot in mid-July.  The same week as the MoodleMoot, the Federal Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities will be meeting in Seattle to present their findings and entertain public comments and questions.  Information about the commission meeting can be found here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-06-23/html/2011-15721.htm.  I encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to attend (physically or virtually).

    Christian is right in that just a 508 compliance determination does not truly mean a system is accessible.  The main point of Frank’s post that I believe is being overlooked here is, even if a system is fully compliant, if the content creators are not cognizant of or concerned with keeping the materials accessible, then compliance becomes moot.  It falls on the system administrators and instructional technologists to inform and train content creators.  Ultimately, upper administration must bear the responsibility of making accessibility and compliance a priority across educational technology, because failure to do so is recipe for disaster.

  • mbelvadi

    I’m very sympathetic to the blind students, but there’s a part of me also wondering if these kinds of lawsuits are going to have a chilling effect on classroom innovation by faculty. Traditional “sage on the stage” methods and printed texts seem to have a kind of legal “grandfathered” status when it comes to accessibility issues and litigation-shy institutions may discourage exactly the kind of creative pedagogy that future competitiveness requires if lawsuits like this get anywhere. Saying that “accessible product alternatives exist and the instructors should stick to those” misses exactly the point about innovation – the typical instructor is probably not in a position to evaluate brand-new ideas against every possible disability that might walk in their door, so it’s safer to avoid legal trouble and avoid trying anything new.

  • http://twitter.com/LSUMoodleMan Buddy Ethridge

    I would respectfully disagree, at least partially, in your statement that it is not the faculty’s responsibility to ensure compliance.  It certainly falls on the institution to test, determine and recommend compliant technologies for the faculty to use, but, speaking from my experience at LSU, many of our faculty members take it upon themselves to search out new technologies and make use of them.  IF a technology-savvy instructor chooses to do this, then the brunt of the responsibility must fall to them.

    This is very much a catch-22 situation, because we want to support and enable faculty members to be forward-thinking and aggressive in their use of technology, but with that mindset comes the understanding that should they choose to employ a tool, they should do their best to ensure it is accessible to all of their students.  We are always happy to have a faculty member bring us a new tool and to evaluate it for them, but I fear the case where a faculty will use a non-compliant tool, be called on it by a student and then point the finger at technology services for not having “warned” them.

    From a training side, LSU offers many classes for faculty members to teach them the best ways to make use of the technologies that we support.  We also have an extensive knowledge base that outlines and offers help with these tools.  However, as mentioned in an earlier post, we can provide a tool and support it, but there is no way that we can be ultimately responsible for content.  Using Moodle as an example, the system is compliant, but should a faculty member choose to upload an Adobe Flash file or an image without alt-text, is that the fault of technology services?

    Ultimately, it is the responsibility of everyone at the institution to ensure that best-faith efforts are made in the realm of compliance.  No systems are perfect yet, but we can all certainly keep accessibility in the forefront and do our best to make sure that every student is given an equal opportunity to receive the best education we can offer.

  • chemistry_guy

    I have always been a fan of Senator Harken of Iowa, who sponsored the ADA legislation, but I believe the ADA was a major overreach, and here is proof.

    This article reminds me of the short story “Harrison Bergeron,” by the late Kurt Vonnegut.  In this canny piece of satirical science fiction, Harrison Beregeron lives in a future society in which equality for all is the highest goal.  Strong and graceful citizens must wear weight belts to keep them from making ordinary or disabled persons jealous and sad, and would-be scientists and thinkers must have devices fit into their brains to inject distracting noises so they can’t out think others with more normal cognitive capabilities.

    If the federal government requires all technology companies to make their software work as well for blind persons as it does for sighted ones, and as effective for persons suffering any imaginable disability as it is for others without any disabilities, the cost will go up dramatically (if this lovely ideal is even achievable at all).

    If the costs go up dramatically, who will pay?

    I detest the current majority on the Supreme Court, but , almost hope this becomes a landmark case that proves the absurdity and the overreach of the ADA in its current form, because I don’t think Alito, Roberts, Thomas, et al will let the law stand as is if it comes to a challenge.

  • 11196496

    Sorry to hear that FSU students had to resort to a legal case in their situation. My experience with the FSU staff of the office for students with diabilities when I was there (1989-98) was very positive and helpful. Key to successful accommodation is the ability of the students to make known what works for them and what doesn’t, and the willingness of the professors to be flexible in the way students fulfill requirements of required classes.

  • amnirov

    Great, they’ll just cancel it for everyone. Thanks, ADA.

  • liujuan
  • rhancuff

    I fail to see the parallels to Vonnegut’s story in which everyone is given burdens to lower their ability to perform. ADA does not state that every student must take the course with a blindfold on and use screen readers. Even accepting your argument that accessibility costs more, you still don’t come anywhere near the implication that ADA punishes the non-handicapped.

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