As is, are indispensable for work and home research. You can find a local pizza, phone number for a distant business, or seemingly answer any question. The web's growth owes a lot to text searches. I even rely on internal PC searches as a main file-browsing tool.

But computers haven't been able to reliably search images. Some have that Kumo could visually search pictures, returning similar hits based on what it sees. Whether Kumo is the first mass market tool that does this or not, the ability could be coming soon--within years, not decades.

Right now, tools can read text from photos better than ever. A favorite, , can even read handwriting, making that text searchable.

Apple's can be trained to recognize family and friends with decent success. It'll even , although that's not a supported use.

Yet, it's hard to even imagine how computing would change with a useful, universal visual search tool. You'd be able to find pictures of certain people, landmarks, or just specific objects. Or you could find a photo of Bill Clinton with Barack Obama and not George Bush.