- Sunday, 22 November 2009
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Smoke, smole and smoke again - INQ cognitive dissonance correspondent
Microsoft demos Visual Search
WITH THE BELIEF that some things are better searched for in pictures rather than text, Microsoft is currently working on what is calls Visual Search, not to be confused with Image search.
Still in beta, Visual Search forms part of the Vole's Bing search engine and groups images into various galleries. At the moment the groups are limited to around 40 topics, mainly spanning sports, entertainment and consumer electronics, but with a few other random things like 'Dog breeds' and 'FBI's most wanted' thrown in for good measure.
Once a gallery has been selected, the images can be filtered and sorted through a series of sub-categories based on the gallery.
Microsoft may be onto something with Visual Search. Some things, although not that many, might be easier for people to sort through based on images, but of course if Microsoft really wants the service to take off it simply needs to create an 'Adult' category.
The beta is currently running only in the US, but if you're elsewhere and want to play around with it, just make sure your location is set to United States and you're good to go.
You'll also need the Vole's own Silverlight installed if you want to run it, though. µ
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.....Google Image Search, maybe a bit of a different approach but not really a fresh idea is it?
upchuck the contents of my stomach...
I am an engineering student. We use UGS NX5 for our 3D modelling. Everything that the program offers comes in a graphical representation on the toolbars. I would rather see the text toolbar with all the options on it. That would save me 80% of the time using the software.
In case of the search engine, I think that simply giving the user the option of searching for their own term, AND giving them a few options on what they may want to search for, Google beats M$ and YHOO... Nice try, but people can read faster than decipher meaningless images on screen. Sorry, M$, another epic failure. Just like Bing.
More moronic worthless crap from Microsoft. If they truly want to got to a visual format, why is there text on the screen? Choices maybe, but Microsoft obviously has no real idea how humans think.
Oh well, one more failed (already) "innovation" that's eventually going to bring Microsoft down.