Pixazza is a new start-up that hopes to become the AdSense of photos. The company has developed software that identifies items in pictures and matches them to real products people can purchase. The company users real product experts to help match related products. For example, when visiting your favorite celebrity site, if you find something that looks great on someone, if available, you will be able to mouse-over to get pricing on related products, and click to learn more and buy.

“Pixazza’s unique technical advantage is its crowdsourcing platform,” said CTO James Everingham. “No computer algorithm can identify a black pair of Jimmy Choo boots from the 2009 fall collection as well as a person. Rather than rely on computer algorithms, our platform enlists product experts to drive the process.”

Pixazza has raised a Series A fund worth $5.75 million from Google Read the full story

In an effort by Google to deliver more targeted advertising, Google is testing a new program that tracks your behavior on the Internet by tracking what type of sites you visit. For example, if you continuously visit financial sites, chances are, you like finance. Google will then show financial ads to you on various websites you visit that run Google AdSense. You can also actually tell Google your interests in the Ad Preferences Manager.

I think this type of targeting system is fairly overdue. Now that Google better understands your interests and displays advertising that is more appealing to you, there is now a higher chance you will actually click the ad.