Market Leader iStockphoto to Participate in Revolutionary Visual Search Portal Targeting Both Buyers and Sellers in the Stock Photography Market

SAN FRANCISCO, July 18, 2007 -- CogniSign, a leader in image search technology, has signed iStockphoto, the world's busiest image and video market, to join its xcavator.netTM visual search portal, which services both buyers and sellers in the stock photography market. iStockphoto's inventory of 1.8 million photos from over 38,000 contributors has already been added to the portal.

The portal is open to the public at www.xcavator.net. A video introduction is provided to help new users get the most out of their xcavator.net experience.

xcavator.net has an extremely focused, natural and intuitive interactive photo search, providing buyers of stock photography with a fast, fun, and immersive browsing experience based on both visual content and keywords. The key to the visual search capabilities is the portal's color and image search engines, powered by the award-winning CogniSign Intelligent Image Recognition Technology. Visual search allows a user to look for similar images within databases containing millions of images -- just like a human can look at a few dozen manually -- based on color, key features and their spatial relationships and proximity, etc.

xcavator.net has unlimited scalability, and iStockphoto joins Photovault of San Francisco who initiated the portal's Beta test. iStockphoto is the first royalty free provider at the site, and Photovault is the first rights managed provider.

Garth Johnson, Vice President of Business Development for iStockphoto, said, "We are always working hard to find high quality venues to get our images in front of as many new people as possible. xcavator.net's reach and excellent search tools make them an ideal partner for us."

Carla Thompson, Research Analyst at Guidewire Group, is positive about the impact the CogniSign visual search technology will have on the stock photography market, and feels that the company will also do well with future products in the consumer image and video markets. "This type of core visual search technology is key to making current consumer image and video applications easier to navigate and use," she said. "CogniSign understands that productizing the technology is equally as important, to create the right new user experiences for widespread adoption. Its next step should be to develop new products that address the needs of everyday consumers, who don't have any time for a learning curve."

CogniSign's mission is to create powerful, fast, fun, and easy to use image and video search for both professionals and consumers by deploying its visual search technology to augment the text based search currently used in image and video applications. In many cases, the company expects that visual search will take a leading role by providing fast, immersive browsing, and text information will play a more supporting role.

"We worked hard on a brand new user interface for the xcavator.net portal, and expected a lot in the results," said Bryan Calkins, CEO of CogniSign. "But we were still surprised at how powerful the visual search browsing is in the end product, and the synergy it creates with the more traditional text based keywords and metadata also present. We are very excited about our participation in the stock photography market and in consumer markets as well."

About CogniSign

CogniSign is a technology company providing visual search product solutions based on its award-winning Intelligent Image Recognition Technology (patents pending). CogniSign LLC is a privately held company based in San Francisco.

About iStockphoto

iStockphoto, http://www.istockphoto.com, is the world's busiest image market, with an image downloaded every 2.5 seconds. iStock pioneered the micropayment phenomenon in this industry, enabling buyers to license images for as little as a dollar. iStockphoto entered the stock video market in September of 2006, selling video for as low as $5 per 30 second clip. In partnership with its members, iStockphoto has turned community into commerce, transforming the digital imagery market by encouraging passionate dialogue and education, while making imagery affordable to businesses that may not have licensed imagery otherwise. iStockphoto is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Getty Images.