With the consumer adoption of mobile devices, such as cellular telephones, laptop computers, personal digital assistants, and the like, these devices have provided an avenue for solving challenges facing consumers. Device manufacturers and service providers are continually seeking applications and services to meet these challenges. With advancements in the manufacturing processes of physical items, such as consumer products, consumers are offered a wider selection of choices concerning characteristics of the products (e.g., color, texture, pattern, and the like). Often, differences between characteristics can be so subtle as to be indiscernible by the average consumer. Moreover, different vendors of consumer products often have their own unique system for identifying the various characteristics, making matching between vendors of consumer products on the basis of the characteristic more difficult. By way of example, paint vendors often have their own naming system for the various paints they produce, and matching paints between vendors is often based on merely a visual, side-by-side inspection of the paints. Where one of the paints has already been applied to an object, such as a bedroom wall, it is often more difficult to make the comparison.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for an approach to develop applications and services for mobile devices with respect to discerning characteristics of items.