Stock Photo War of the Widgets

June 11, 2005 -- As ‘War of the Worlds’ cruises into theaters, the War of the Widgets has also begun for the multi-billion dollar stock content licensing industry. In the battle for desktop search, StockPhotoFinder.com has entered the fray by offering photo buyers a free Widget to facilitate searching the databases of stock photography agencies and commercial photographers.

This free tool roars from the Mac Tiger Dashboard (OS 10.4), empowering users with simplified search directly from their computer desktop of millions of stock photos from all kinds of websites. Similar in functionality to a web browser, the Widget is faster, more direct and easier than other options for searching commercial imagery. It leverages the dynamic, new Dashboard technology from Apple Computer. 59% of StockPhotoFinder.com users search for stock imagery on Macintosh computers.

Desktop search is emerging as a significant access point to various markets. Major search engines have encouraged the trend with their general search tools. Not surprisingly, it is also a growing area of interest for niches, such as licensees and licensors of commercial photography. StockPhotoFinder’s Widget offers image users the ability to conveniently search for databased images, download and try out watermarked previews in a design layout, and then directly contact the rights holder for e-commerce or assisted licensing. Licensors of content want to target market image users where they work (on their computer, these days) while users desire the speed and convenience of doing one search in seconds to find what previously took many minutes at multiple websites. The StockPhotoFinder.com Widget offers a win-win scenario. StockPhotoFinder.com is the only company to take advantage of this advanced technology with its search of multiple, stock photo website databases.

This Widget is now available for free download from www.stockphotofinder.com/stock-photo-widget.html, Apple.com and from several shareware websites.

Once downloaded into the appropriate folder, this Widget appears in a “Dashboard” of services on the users desktop, always on standby to enable one-click image search of images from databased content websites via the unique stock photo search engine at StockPhotoFinder.com.

StockPhotoFinder.com is the leading centralized source to locate millions of images in the stock photography industry. The search engine, the first of its kind in the industry, offers the full inventory of scores of recognized stock photo sources, fully searchable by keywords, enabling thumbnail viewing and direct contact with image providers.