Customers to Shop by Image on Web Site

So you want those sleek pair of black boots worn by supermodel Tyra Banks or the bling bling sported by Paris Hilton? This holiday season, customers can get their chance with a new Web site called Like.com that bills itself as the first visual search engine, allowing consumers to search for items by appearance instead of just text and then purchase similar versions -- at all price points -- from 200 merchants' Web sites.

The site, operated by San Mateo, Calif.-based Riya, an expert in visual computing, allows customers to click on images of celebrities wearing accessories or on pictures of handbags, jewelry, shoes and watches. In a few weeks, the site will add clothing, according to Riya's CEO and co-founder Munjal Shah. Eventually, customers will be able to download their own images onto the site.

Shah said that the site features about two million different products from such merchants as

and and the company is adding 30,000 different products a day.

uses face recognition technology; it looks inside a photo and creates a digital signature that describes the photo's content and enables a more accurate search for similar looking items.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

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