April 1, 2009 12:59 pm
Published by Fran
Google Invests in Pixazza, An AdSense for Images is another neat little crowdsourcing initiative. What interested me the most was this: “As James Everingham, Pixazza’s CTO, states, “No computer algorithm can identify a black pair of Jimmy Choo boots from the 2009 fall collection in the same way a person can. Rather than rely on image analysis algorithms, our platform enlists product experts to drive the process.” ” In other words, they are paying indexers/cataloguers. Not very much, it’s true, but it is still good to see someone in tech admitting that old fashioned human beings still have their uses!... Read more »
March 29, 2009 12:32 pm
Published by Fran
IPTC Web‘s free-to-use taxonomies for news, including categorisations for images.
March 24, 2009 7:13 am
Published by Fran
This post is off-topic, but I signed up to pick your tech heroine and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009 in commemoration of Ada Lovelace. I thought long and hard about which of the many brilliant and inspirational women I should write about. Ada Lovelace is clearly getting plenty of coverage. I expect Amazing Grace Hopper is another popular choice. I almost chose the tragic tale of Hypatia. I ponder her fate when confronted with people who lecture me on faith and morality. However, my choice is unusual and personal in that it is... Read more »
March 21, 2009 7:55 am
Published by Fran
A reading list from controlledvocabulary.com. “David Riecks founded ControlledVocabulary.com as a resource to help others learn how best to build controlled vocabulary lists, thesauri, and keyword hierarchies for describing images in databases. He has been involved in many recent standards initiatives as well as being a featured speaker at industry events such as PhotoPlus Expo, the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, and the first and second International PhotoMetadata Conferences.”
March 18, 2009 6:50 am
Published by Fran
The FT reports that the Local Government Association has banned use of the word “taxonomy” in public documents! “Other words recommended for omission from public documents include “benchmarking”, “place shaping” and “taxonomy”.” I know the General Public think it’s all about stuffed animals, but to classify taxonomy with “beaconicity” and “coterminious” just adds insult to injury!
March 15, 2009 11:19 am
Published by Fran
Designing for faceted search – some clear “dos” and “don’ts” when constructing taxonomies to support faceted searching.
March 12, 2009 6:22 am
Published by Fran
Thanks to Mark for unearthing this hilarious post on desserts that reference other desserts from Raspberry Debacle. To give you a flavour (no pun intended) the post describes the “classificatory difficulties” of organising desserts. “What are the fundamental dessert types, the metaphorical atoms of dessert, or “dessertoms”? A brownie is very “stable”, which is to say it can be combined with many different desserts while still remaining delicious — but surely it isn’t a fundamental dessert type: a brownie is basically just a sulky teenage cake. A crepe, on the other hand, probably is a fundamental dessert type, but it’s... Read more »
March 11, 2009 1:06 pm
Published by Fran
It seems that everyone’s social networks are getting out of hand and the heart of the web 2.0 world now needs a bit of old fashioned tidying up. From hierarchies of “friends” to classic categorisations by topic, it’s time to start applying good old taxonomical principles to your social media: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/0EWPlJVKNSE/ http://www.orsiso.com/aboutus.html.
March 6, 2009 12:27 pm
Published by Fran
I heard a talk by Ben Shneiderman about information visualisation yesterday for the Cambridge Usability Professionals Group. (It was ironic that I had a “locational usability” problem and was almost late, having made the novice error of trying to find Microsoft Research in the William Gates Building – which is indeed named after Microsoft’s Bill Gates foundation – but Microsoft Research in Cambridge was set up by Roger Needham, so it is in his building!) The talk itself was very easy to follow with lively demonstrations of a number of visualisation tools. Shneiderman was very careful to point out that... Read more »
February 28, 2009 4:18 pm
Published by Fran
I recently returned from a visit to New York. The numerical street/avenue system seemed to make navigation very easy, but it is important not to make mistakes over the numbers (I almost confused 145th with 45th Street – they are miles apart!) and you always need two numbers to make a grid reference. In London, you need to remember more names, but usually only one number. I would never try to find somewhere in London with just a street name and a number – I always want to know the area. This seems to make navigation harder, but once you... Read more »