Google has released some new services, Google Profiles and Google Similar Image Search. Both services are easy to use, and are worth the effort to learn. Let's first review Google Similar Image Search. Quite often when you are looking for an image, you have an idea of the desired image ... but Google can not read your mind! For instance, let's say you wanted an image that shows brain neurons and waves. Using the new search capability you could query for brain images ... and then when you see something you like, click upon the similar images link. Let's try it ... by running a query on brain, you will find the image shown below. Click upon the similar images link! Neat, but more importantly ... useful!
Let's do the same thing with the query cat ... this time we want orange tabbys ... our similar images results.
And the other new Google service? Profiles. Have you ever Googled your own name? Most of us have looked up our web results. Wouldn't it be nice if Google had a profile that they called in search results? The answer is "yes", and now Google has profiles. To learn how to build your profile, link here. if you would like to see how results are presented, here is the Google query for Richard Hoeg (me). Profiles are listed at the bottom of your result pages. Look for my thumbnail photo.
Stephen: How could there ever be anything quite similar to you! :)
Posted by: Rich Hoeg | April 25, 2009 at 08:18 AM
I tried out the 'similar search'. It works nicely on some prepackaged examples, but try it on anything real - like, say, an image of me - and it doesn't produce any results.
Posted by: Stephen Downes | April 24, 2009 at 09:16 PM