If you are working in the area of artificial intelligence, a new web API may be of interest.

Strongsteam is currently a closed alpha that is under development with the aim of eventually providing the means to carry out tasks such as extracting text from images using optical character recognition.

The idea is to provide a REST based API that allows web clients to interact with its AI modules to complete tasks without having to program. This is a similar idea to Google Predict which was recently turned in to a full commercial service. This particular API seems more oriented towards visual and audio signal processing. You upload your data, call the API by using the correct URL and download the results. It is designed to make testing out AI in web apps and mobile apps easier.

Other goals for the API include the ability to extract text from audio, to use natural language processing to analyse, cluster and compare text, and to have the ability to see whether an object in one image occurs in another.

The API was demoed recently  at EuroSciPy 2011, the annual European conference for scientists using Python, showing how the names on plant labels in photographs could be extracted and made available as text.

You can read more about the project and apply to join the closed alpha here: http://strongsteam.com/. It is very early days for the project and it is difficult to predict if it has much of a future but it is an interesting idea.

Further Reading

Google Prediction API update

Google Prediction API v1.2

Google to start charging for Prediction API

Google gets into AI with an API

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