On 30/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)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=ojqla…
which is identified as a Banksia ericifolia, not to mention this
http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?&UQR=ojqla…
which is simply 'a Banksia flower'. Commons, however, led me straight
to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Banksia_serrata . :P
cheers
Brianna