Sometimes you invent something for one purpose, but it has completely unexpected applications elsewhere. NASA didn’t send people to the moon in order to invent non-stick pans but, according to legend, Teflon is one of the by-products of the space exploration programmes.

When Malmo based Polar Rose created an imaging application for mobile social networks, its founders may have unwittingly created a crime fighting tool. Their strategy is still to create software that operators will want to install, to attract mobile social networking subscribers. But their invention could be used to investigate anti social networks too.

The founder, Jan Erik Solem, began with a Lund University project to create algorithms to analyse images. The original intention was to analyse 2D images and, through mathematical analysis of how pixel patterns and light and shade change, use that raw data to build the most likely 3D image.

But the ability to analyse pictures lent itself to other applications. Since venture capitalists are obsessed with social networking, Polar Rose’s initial funding reflected that fashionable focus. The software is being marketed as a tool to make sense of the millions of photos that we take, load and then never use, primarily because they are do difficult to find. This is a big drawback for social networkers, explains CEO Nikolas Nyholm. It’s like a sniffer dog. Show it a picture of, say, a man on Scotland Yard’s most wanted list, and it can scan other photo databases (such as Facebook and Flickr) to see if he’s made an appearance there.

The original idea, to find out who the characters are in any photo, was designed for ordinary people to use to make better use of their photo content. Photo sharing sites like FlickR could use these services to activate their users’ underserved digital photo archives. “Our partners are photo sharing and media sites who will use our technology to grow page views and increase ad revenues,” says Nyholm.

Why not use this digital sniffer dog to fight crime? You show the system a photo of, say, Mike Magee. The software takes in and analyses the fiend’s features, then goes roaring off round the internet, looking for any identical digital patterns on crowd scenes. It would be great for tracking down criminals and football hooligans.
 
“People are free to use the technology as they like, but that wasn’t the application we originally had in mind,” says Solem. That’s the point about these mobile technology start ups. They don’t start out with the killer application, but gradually evolve one.