1. A system comprising: a portable device that optically captures an image and transmits information regarding the image to a distal server; at least one of the device and the server deriving a search term directly from at least one of the image and the transmitted information, where the search term is derived according to an indexing system of a search engine; at least one of the device and the server causing the search term to be submitted to the search engine that indexes different types of publicly accessible content information; and the search engine using the search term to produce a results set, and causing at least a portion of the results set to be transmitted back to the portable device.