A Few Minutes with New RSS Image Search Engine: Pixsy
Search Briefs
Image Search--Pixsy A Few Minutes with Relaunched Image Search Engine: Pixsy Stefanie O. reports on the relaunch of image engine Pixsy.com. Pixsy now searches RSS feeds for image and also video material. Content comes from a wide variety of sources. Interesting and potentially useful idea. That said, it's a new service as of today so let's give it some time.
+ Keyword search (metadata for both imagery and video) or browse by category.
Note: The database is continously updated so the results you get are likely not going to be the same ones I received when I tested.
+ I selected the "World News" category. The first result (screen cap) was to an image (and profile) of a Seattle area tennis player. Is this world news?
+ The politics category contained this image of Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct 2. Again, aside from the politics of making a film that bombed last weekend, not sure of the political angle. In fact, the entire category only contained 53 images at the time I tested. The next image of the Manhattan skyline and an outline of a coyote also has little to do with politics although it's an interesting story.
+ Watch that metadata. I came across this great shot of a jet flying over the Golden Gate Bridge. Remember, the crawl date is not the same thing as the image date. This image was crawled in 2005 but nowhere, not even the image's own site, do we learn when the actual image was taken. PSA became part of US Airways in 1988. Again, an issue for community sites where metadata can run from great and useful to awful.
+ Search: George Bush
No help in differentiating George W. from George H.W. Relevancy issues. I found this result that is an image of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dancing. It "hits" on George Bush because the name is found in a story about a Bush visit to India and that's included in the caption that Pixsy is searching.
The video tab reveals several clips. When I selected this item the clip I viewed was not the video timeline that I selected.
Search: iPod Nano
On the Pixsy home page you'll find a list of recent searches. One search that appeared here while I was using Pixsy was iPod Nano. One of the first results in the 549 total was this one. This image (from a community site) does not show an iPod or iPod Nano. However, since the person who shared the image used the term iPod (not iPod Nano) in the description of the image it appears in the search results. Here's another example of the same type of thing. To most people (except those pictured) this image has little to do with the portable music device. This is an illustration of tagging/searching for yourself vs. sharing the tags and imagery with others. Same thing here, in fact this picture simply uses the word nano in the description but not an iPod Nano. As the database (not only Pixsy) grows larger false drops (and spam) will become issues especially when tagging quality and accuracy vary so much. When I narrowed the search to the "News - World" category (not sure what some of these have to do with World news but we can save that discussion for later, I came across this image from the Seattle Times. Is this person wearing an iPod Nano? No. How about an iPod? No. This image was returned because the woman pictured is named Lourdes Flores Nano.
+ Search: Baseball
As many of you know yesterday was the first full day of the pro baseball season and since RSS is such a part of online news these days I wondered if I would find lots of images from opening day games and events. However, a simple search for baseball did not reveal much from yesterday. I even narrowed to the "News - Sports" category and came up empty.
Video? Again nothing from yesterday. However, I did find a video clip of a "bizarre" assault at a Wal-Mart with a man using a baseball bat. It seems that Pixsy returns the result if the search term is found anywhere in the description. Is this clip about baseball, the sport, or the use of a "baseball bat" in a violent act? Btw, I was unable to view this clip. What I saw was today's news from the AP.
Overall, Pixsy search is an interesting idea that needs a lot more work to make it truly useful. The availability of more imagery via RSS will also help. We will check back in a month or two.
Other Sources:
For up-to-the-minute news images, Yahoo News does a good job. These searches will find news images as they hit the database from Reuters or the AP. The search box on the Yahoo News home page also allows the searcher to limit to only "News Photos." Regional Yahoo News sites will also return different results.
Postscript: I did find one use of Pixsy that's interesting, the ability to browse imagery by source. On the Pixsy homepage note the links in the lower left corner. For example, you'll spot links to view images from The New York Times and the BBC. Still issues with categorization however. For example, when looking at imagery from the NYT, I spotted an image in the "News-Tech" category of an Enron's ex-treasurer who will be testifying for the prosecution. Also, in the "News-World" category several images that might have been more useful in the "News-US" category.
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