Ushoppa.com

Ushoppa.com incorporates Intelligent Name Search (INS)

2007-11-13T09:40:00.000+08:00

As its name portrays, it’s definitely something smart :D What it basically does, is that it allows online shoppers to text-search for UShoppa's products with uncertain product names – ambiguous inputs. In other words, if you misspelled a brand or a product you’re looking for, or if the stored information in our database is with different punctuation/short forms, INS will still display the correct results. Pretty smart, right? Told you so :p

Below is an example. Laugh all you want but hey, it happened, still happens, and will happen.

Table 1: Text search with and without INS

A normal database will return you results based on your query/search ONLY if it is exactly as stored in the database. You will lose customers, you will lose sales. Some will get so frustrated and irritated and vow never to return to your site. Pardon my exaggeration but, I’m sure some people feel like that when they can’t get what they’re searching for.

Ushoppa.com celebrities of the month – dress like one of them

2007-11-07T17:07:00.001+08:00

Figure 1: Maggie Q

Say, you’re very much interested in that dress Maggie is prepped up in. Your eyes can’t move away from it. You can’t stop thinking about it and imagine how gorgeous you’ll look in it. Heck, you would probably look better in that dress than Maggie herself *wink*.

To obtain what she’s wearing, all you have to do is click on the star on the celebrity, and ushoppa will search for similar items and throw some results back at you :p It could be a dress, a top, the bling-bling accessories, that pair of crazy high-heels or whatever.

Loads of fun.

Click on the star on Maggie. This will bring you to a page with results similar to the apparel worn by the artist.

Figure 2: Results for similiar dresses

You can also perform a “Search Similar” for more refined results. Or you can adjust those sliders that control the importance of shape, color and pattern. And click “apply”.

Figure 3: Voila… your ideal dress

Same goes for the other must-haves on our pick-of-the-month-artists. Here, say for example you’d like to get a pair of jeans like Avril’s. Click on her jeans highlighted in a star.

Figure 4: Avril Lavigne

Over here, you will have a list of jeans with various cuttings: skinny fit, low rise, boot cut, straight cut...

Figure 5: Search results for jeans

As for our third celebrity of the month, you click the star on Eminem’s bandana to look for bandanas.

Figure 6: Eminem

There you go. Bandanas. Ta-da!

Figure 7: Bandanas

Compound image searching with Ushoppa.com - coming SOON, so stay tuned

2007-10-23T10:00:00.000+08:00

One of the most exciting image search technologies that has been developed by ushoppa.com and will be coming your way soon enough (it'll definitely worth your wait, who likes things that don’t fully work, anyway?) – which enables you to perform compound image search. For instance:

- You see this dress hanging at your favorite store every time you pass by, you kinda like the pattern but it’d be perfect only IF it had another cutting (which is more complimenting to your body shape) or a different material which suits that dress better (in your/friends’ opinion), OR

- You see a shirt with the perfect cutting but want it more fancy-looking, outstanding and unique to portray your personality, OR

- I can't of anything else, whatever it is… humans (especially ladies) can’t help being particularly particular when it comes to clothes and shopping, in other words (or not so pleasant to hear)
picky.

Sounds familiar? If, in the past, all those cookie cutter shopping sites were not able to help you with your above laments, ushoppa.com can! It will save you much hassle and frustrations so you won’t frown and grumble to yourself or to that friend of yours you went shopping with like an old hag the whole day.

For example, say, you are interested in searching for shirts that has the shape and color of that in Figure 1a AND has the pattern from another piece of cloth from Figure 1b below. After uploading both images, tell ushoppa that the shape and color of 1a is important, and the texture of 1b is important. Ushoppa will then combine the 2 pictures together with the attributes you have specified, perform a compound search and return the products that have the shape + color of 1a and texture of 1b.

Figure 1: Compound query result

Similarly, as illustrated in Figure 2, you can search for images that have a shape attribute in Figure 2a combined with similar texture and color attributes as in 2b. Upload both pictures, state the attributes that are important to you in each image. Ushoppa will combine the important attributes from both pictures and return products with shape from 2a and pattern + color from 2b. Amazing, interesting and fun altogether, ain’t it? I’d say… Where else can you have so much fun shopping online like this?

Figure 2: Compound query result

* Compound = combination, fusion. Exciting times are here again!!

Online shopping made easier – Snap, Upload and Search

2007-10-16T17:15:00.000+08:00

Here’s HOW…

Snap a picture of d’ dress, top, or whatever that fancies you.
In this example, a picture of a pair of white boots is snapped, see red circle in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Picture taken from magazine
Upload the picture to ushoppa.com by using the “Search Similar > Upload” feature.

Figure 2: Upload image panel

In order for the system to disregard any background noise, don’t forget to specify the “Object of interest in image”, in this case “boots”. After clicking upload, ushoppa will automatically perform an image search and return you with relevant results.
Set and apply your preference
You can further refine your search by specifying the importance of the search item’s characteristic – colour, shape and pattern. You do this by manipulating the slider bars (click and drag) and then clicking “Apply”.

Figure 4: Apply aspect and set importance

Results returned will then be ranked by the importance of color, shape and pattern that you specified. Voilà! :)

Figure 5: Search Result

Announcement: LAUNCH of ushoppa.com

2007-10-09T10:01:00.000+08:00

After 50 years of independence,

Malaysia

will be launching her very first astronaut, Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor into space, TODAY – Oct 10^th 2007. He'll be playing traditional Malay children's games without gravity, paint some batik and making teh tarik (thestar). Oops... correction, correction... after much hoohaa from the public, it's been decided that he should conduct some serious scientific experiments in space. Also, more interestingly, he’ll be the FIRST Muslim in the world to fast and break fast in space (Boston news) during the holy month of Ramadhan.

On this same day, Oct 10^th, the perfect date where perfect completeness meets perfect beauty (十全十美), ushoppa.com is finally and OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED. It is the first online comparative shopping site in Asia that allows users to search by image (shape, texture and colour). It is developed and powered by ewarna.com, a Malaysian IT firm. And it's entirely MIM (Made In Malaysia).

As mentioned in the sneak preview/previous post, you can now start your search-compare-and-shop (see previous post). Just go over to http://www.ushoppa.com/ and kickstart by: clicking on your favourite celeb dresses or “what’s hot” to search for similar items, browse by categories, search items by keying in the keyword, or viewing all items with just a click anywhere that looks like a link if you don’t know where to start (of course this excludes ad links but if you really want to click on the ads, by all means do so :P)

It really is a fun and easy way to shop (check out previous post to find out why). In order to provide such flexibility and convenience, our team of developers from eWarna worked their a**es off to make this happen. Anyway, this site is catered for anyone who loves to shop and have specific items to look for. It saves you precious time and effort. Do check out the site, you’ll never know what you might just find there :)

Da most exciting and convenient way to shop – a sneak preview of UShoppa.com

2007-10-02T20:39:00.000+08:00

SHOPPING!!! Something ladies can never be separated from, and so it's been said too many a time. Ain't that oh-so-true? In fact, many guys are becoming ecstatic about shopping these days. It's never been easier and more convenient since online shopping sites came about.

Presenting a sneak preview of Asia's FIRST ever COMPARISON shopping site, UShoppa, that allows online shopaholics like you, me and so many others to search for products by their images based on shape, texture and of course... colour. It is powered by Malaysia's eWarna.com, the expert in colour matching and communication, artificial intelligence and image processing.

**Launching on the 10th Oct 2007**

1. Shop with confidence and ease with Image Search. Just snap a shot (with that hi-tech phone of yours. If you don't have one, just borrow by force :p) and upload the image of that gorgeous and covetous gown you saw, be it from some magazine or site, for your homecoming/prom. Why is it called homecoming anyway? Nevermind that. (Continuing from upload) Upload it to UShoppa and just search for matching products with just a click. It's that simple, really. UShoppa will perform the hocus-pocus and from there, return you the list of match closest to your uploaded picture, along with a list of online shops from which you can purchase the dress, complete with price comparison to suit your budget and also merchant's rating(s).

2. Find your favourite texture and patterns. What's more interesting? You not only get to search for matching designs and cuttings, but also textures like silk, chiffon, cotton, lycra, and the like. Not forgetting patterns, be it floral (to show your feminine side), polka-dots (if you're feeling fancy), or striped (to look wild). Yup, you “read” it right. With this interactive user friendly technology that eWarna owns, you can really shop without a fuss. UShoppa will find you the closest match for your search criteria, and other additional information as stated in the last line of point 1.

3. Pick the precise product colour with Colour Search. Decisions, decisions. First it was the cutting and design. Then material and pattern. Now colour... Life just got to come with full of tough choice. Take a pick, anyway? Next, define the colour you want from UShoppa's 3D color space and combine it with Intelligent Name Search and Price Search to find the product with the colour you desire.

Quick feats

Search by colour, shape and pattern

Search by colour

Search by colour, shape and pattern(a)

Search by colour, shape and pattern(b)

Search by colour, shape and pattern(c)

Search by keyword

Search by keyword and colour

Vast variety (based on categories)

Search by categories

Monthly/Weekly Fashion UPDATES (what's hot and “in”) - and you can click on the pictures to search for similar items

Stars' and *hot* picks

Search similar by picture upload using camera phone. The quick and easy way that helps eliminates frustrations like “This is not I was looking for. I want something like.... Not quite... More like... what she is wearing in XYZ magazine”. Sounds familiar?

Search by photo upload