Tuesday 31 March 2009

Visual Search Engines

There are a number of visual search engines around, which instead of providing a list of hits in a linear fashion (like google), different metaphors are used to represent the retrieved pages. Here are some examples:


  • http://www.kartoo.com/ - this is a search engine which uses Cartography as its basis, and uses map like visualisations to represent the importance of pages, and he relations between them. Nice idea, but its not clear how the metaphor works.

  • http://www.search-cube.com/ - uses a cube to represent results, which you move around with either the up, down,left right keys or shift/mouse movement. Thumbnails are shown as tiles on each face of the cube - thumbnails can be pages, images, videos.

  • http://quintura.com/ - presents a tag cloud, together with a linear list of results.

  • http://www.searchme.com/ - presents screenshots of pages, which the user can navigate to either the left or right. Search terms are shown on the retrieved screenshots. Video Demo..

  • http://redzee.com/ - much the same as searchme, but with more pages to left and right displayed.

  • http://middlespot.com/ - presents a set of page screenshots in the same way image search engines work, but these are thumbnails of the retrieved pages. One page at time is expanded and highlighted.

  • http://viewzi.com/ - presents results as tiles, can either view text versions or screenshot thumbnails. To change view you navigate left and right. Video Demo.

  • http://www.sbrows.com - presents a list of thumbnails in the lower part of the browser, and a screenshot of the page being inspected is presented in the middle (and larger) section of the browser. Navigation of the list is done left to right. This is a beta service, and doesn't appear to be working properly; thumbnails clicked on don't seem to match the screenshot when I used it. Video Demo - no sound.




Basic problem with all these systems - how do you represent a multi-dimensional space in 2D or 3D representations? All the the services here are either meta-search engines, or are another type of interface to one search engine (e.g. Google). Its difficult to know what some systems are using as their underlying search services.

The Future of Information Retrieval

Views on this can be found on these videos (including some old friends and colleagues):





(Software patents are crazy!)





Found this by using Kartoo, a visual search engine, and clicking on the videos tab. Must do a full scale evaluation of visual search engines one day. Watch this space.

Monday 30 March 2009

Monday Blues Cure

Heres 'Tears for Fears' Shout!





There are several versions here, but this is the best quality I could find. The sync between the music and the video isn't right....

Sunday 29 March 2009

Wikipedia and editorial control

Nicholas Carr points out that Wikipedia is forced to impose editorial control on some of its pages. Some you can of course, look for the edit tab.

Monday 23 March 2009

Monday Blues Cure

'new order blue monday', first hit on youtube:





Extra - 'the beatles I am the walrus', 1st hit on youtube:



Monday 16 March 2009

Monday Blues Cure

Rather charming example of Speech Synthesis in a web site called Bicycle Built For 2,000, here. Video:




Bicycle Built for Two Thousand from Aaron on Vimeo.

(h/t: David Thompson). Also: here's Tear for Fears 'Women in Chains' Live:





3rd hit down on youtube, first barred :(

Friday 13 March 2009

Blogs - the negative side

The Guardian Guide had an article on Blogs which slag off various celebs including:





None of them are obsessed with the celebs they hate, which is why they have blogs, websites to express their indifference. LOL.



More.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Monday 9 March 2009

Monday Blues Cure

A search for Arvo Pärt: Silouans Song brings up a video of the Vienna Philharmonic Women. Embedding disabled.

Monday 2 March 2009

Monday Blues Cure

Here's the piano/violin version of Fratres, found by search on the composers name then browsing (Arvo Part):





There a Cello version as well:





Not sure what the graphic analysis gives, but I've love to know! Theres also a chamber orchestral version with violin:





And for Cello and Piano:





Theres also a Quartet version, but I can't find that one at the moment on youtube.