Vodafone is demonstrating a trial service called “Otello”, which is a search engine that uses images, rather than words at the CeBIT show in Germany. Rather than use a word as a search term, Otello users can send images via MMS from their mobiles and the search service which then returns the results to the user’s phone as an “ordinary” search result.

A picture from a newspaper, billboard, book cover or place are all examples of what can be searched for. Vodafone is running trials with a German newspaper that lets users find out more about stories by photographing the images that appear in the article and MMSing the images.