On 30/01/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Go over to Getty images (http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/home/home.aspx) and try out their search and see just how much we suck. Do a 'search all creative' and type in 'black child eating icecream'.
Their system is quite simple but very powerful. They have many tags, from very broad to very specific, and images are marked with all that apply (sometimes many dozens). A simple tag suggestion system makes it easy to find the tags that are in use, and clear up ambiguities (do you want black the color or black the race?). You then query them with a simple and quick intersection tool. You can drill down or adjust your search string, but it's all very simple quick and easy. There are no complex query languages, no snazzy semantic markup, no funky idea hierarchies. It just WORKS. And it works for many tens of thousands of people every day.
Credit where credit's due: I think Commons is stronger when it comes to species identification. Stock photo archives like this tend to offer lots of generally pretty pictures of plants and animals, but Commons has a much stronger structure and identification info on species generally I think.
At Getty I searched for 'banksia serrata' and it returned this http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?&UQR=ojqlag... which is identified as a Banksia ericifolia, not to mention this http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?&UQR=ojqlag... which is simply 'a Banksia flower'. Commons, however, led me straight to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Banksia_serrata . :P
cheers Brianna