The Amazon identify-by-photo feature uses Mechanical Turk (ie, real people). Try taking a photo of a handwritten note with something like "show me a book with a

The Amazon identify-by-photo feature uses Mechanical Turk (ie, real people). Try taking a photo of a handwritten note with something like "show me a book with an author whose name starts with K" (Nothing too complicated or tough to solve-the pay is very low per hit) This can occasionally lead to amusing results when you send in photos of things which are not products, like people. A photo of a friend yielded the Freaks and Geeks DVD, and a photo of myself brought back the book "Asian slim secrets: the natural method for weight loss proven by billions of Asians" Note that these results vary a lot by who takes the MT hit; usually a picture of a face will yield something like a photo frame.