Google launched new option in its image search. Now it is possible to sort the results not only by choosing size of the image but also by pointing on the type of content we want to acquire. It is possible to choose from the news content, faces, clip art, line drawings and photo content. This operation enables efficient limiting the number of results.

It is a quicker way to reach the same results we could get in the past by typing for example “clip art” in the query box. This improvement in great extent simplifies finding images we want. Read more at Google’s blog here.

-mw

Recently we can observe the raise of new category of search engines, offering us kind of visual search, basing rather on clicking than on typing the query. We are supposed to chose keywords from displayed cloud of tags. I wrote about CloudTuner (which is still under construction) and about Tagedu, which work this way. There are also other search engines, basing on this system. Among them we can count Quintura, TagGalaxy and KartOO.

TagGalaxy is geared to image search, at the same time it is most graphically advanced search engine I have ever seen. It presents real galaxy of tags, after typing main tag, we see other, organised like categories and subcategories, what was visualised as little solarsystems. In the end, after getting most relevant combination of tags, we click on the planet with our tags and we see images stack to the planet like little yello memo cards.

Quintura bases on cloud of tags, at the main page we can find the cloud of most popular tags, we can click on the one of them or type our query and than, with the use of tags, we can refine our search by narrowing the query. This one is most intuitve one, we can subtract particular tag or cross it totally away.

KartOO is a search engine that enables to narrow our query only with use of top ranked search results. It presents main search results, with the tags between them, and it also displays the relation-net of tags with particular sites. By clicking on particular tags we can refine the query, we can also choose the topic, we are most interested in, from the list on the left.

To sum up we can describe the tag search engines as:

- based on typing the query, cloud of tags is just the way to refine/narrow the query;

- not always it is intuitive;

- tag search is similar to vertical search;

- the order of chosing tags plays a role;

- it is limited - sometimes tag we would like to use is not available, because it was not associated with particular topic by authors or contributors who add tags;

- it takes longer time than traditional search, although it can be a real pleasure (if using Tag Galaxy).

Navigating your search with tags is a little more complicated than doing it traditional way. I believe that tags are great help with refining the query, and can be used in faceted search. But searching only with use of tags just takes to much time.

However it is more efficient in image search, but images are not indexed as well, as text, and they are predominantly described with tags, so it explains that fact. Ascribing tags to texts is based on individual perceiving of particular text, which is also affected by our context and interests. For the sake of that it would be more rational to create tag search engine, with option to personalize it to high extent.

Although some imperfections tag search has great future, I guess, its potential is quite impressive and there are many ways of its develeopement, but this developement is dependant on contributors.

-mw

No later than 5 days ago I wrote about new approach to image search introduced in CloudTurner search engine, and now It turned out that recently two other image search engines/services were released. Spffy and Pixolu are the names.

Spffy is a search engine aggreagator, that offers us offers us searching images from stock services as fotolia, corbis, jupiter images and others. It bases on search engines of these services, so we have advanced search options that are available in this services.In another tab we can search for Web Photos from Flickr and Yahoo. We can also search thorugh picutures uploaded at NASA and Library of Congress domains. In addition to photos, we can search through videos from YouTube, AOL, Live Video, Stock Motion Finder and Getty Footage.

Spffy gives us option named lightbox, we can add our favourite photos to ‘lightbox’ and create the feed with gathered photos.

Pixolu is a service that provides us not only image search, but also option to re-search after selecting images that were most suitable for us at first time. Pixelu has got nice, simple design that does not affect our eyes. We drag’n'drop thumbnails from search results to the refinement area, where we stock all thumnails of images most suitable to our requirements.

Although whole search process is a little bit longer, due to additional step of selecting most appropraite images, search is more effective, and if we are not satisfied we can always redo to the previous step. Pixolu provides search results from Google, Yahoo and Flickr - so it also fits the last tren I wrote about - aggregation of search engines.

-mw