iconolith

Searching with oSkope

Oskope is a visual search tool that searches Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, and Ebay (though I couldn’t get the Ebay search to return anything). While searching Flickr I fist searched for images tagged Second Life and found a few really great images. As you can see below, my results were displayed in a pile that I could interact with and move around (and zoom in and out on). Fortunately, I was able to create an oSkope account and save those great images for later use.

The different search result views are really what make this an interesting interface. Next I searched for coffee, and decided to display the results on a grid. It is much easier to see all the results this way (duh).

The most interesting search I did was on Amazon for graphics tablets. I displayed these results on a graph by price and sales rank. Of course, there is some resolution lost on the accuracy of sales rank in this view, but for an overall view it is a faster way to evaluate results.

There are two things that I initially think would make this search better. The first - it really needs to be faster. The interface seems to hang occasionally which is frustrating. I’d also like to see the licensing information returned with the Flickr photos. It would be a good way to search for Creative Commons-licensed photos.

Results of searching Flickr for the tag SecondLife, displayed in a pile. I saved a few of the images in My Folder. Too bad I can’t create more than one folder for different searches

Search results from Flickr on the tag coffee, displayed in a pile

The same search displayed as a grid

A Search of Amazon for the term “graphics tablet”, this time displayed on a graph.

Just What IS iospace Doing?

This is a question I have been mulling in my head for a few weeks now - somewhat passively…and certainly not so much that I would call and interrogate them. Iospace are the clever geniuses behind the ever-growing Etsy.com, a site for independent crafties and artists to display and sell their wares to the rest of us.

The evil genius in Etsy.com isn’t only that they offer access to such a diverse community of talented creators - it is how they have managed to tackle issues of organization, UI, and search for many thousands of pieces of user-generated content. Search on this site is definitely about the journey more than the destination - with visualizations that not only let you discover items by tag, but by color, time, artist location, and artist/item metric. If fact, it is hard to STOP searching at times because the experience is so intriguing.

The shining star of this site is their Treasury, a “member-curated featured items” collection of temporal lists. The Etsy community shares among itself in the Treasury - but there is something even more amazing - you can actually see other Etsy members browsing the lists in real time. OMG - you can chat with others browsing the same list as you and leave comments as well. Most amazing, from a designers pov is that it is possible to actually observe how people are browsing the area.

There is more information and screenshots available on using Treasury on the Etsy Treasury Demo blog, but why go through all that - just check out the site. This is how browsing/shopping SHOULD be.

The Annoying Ms. Dewey

In the mood to try your patience on many levels? Try searching with this engine.