Bing Visual Search lets searchers browse easily through a slick interface of “structured data sets from trusted partners” using Sliverlight technology. At launch, Bing Visual Search will earn a spot on the homepage search categories, just under Travel, although depending on the homepage image of the day, those links can sometimes get lost in the background colors of the photo.
[Snip]
The concept behind Visual Search is simple: use clear imagery to help users sort through large sets of data easily. Certain categories of search lend themselves more easily to this than others, likely the reason why Bing has launched this feature in beta with a fairly limited set of visual information: cars, animals, people and products. Users must have Silverlight installed on their browsers to fully experience Visual Search.
[Snip]
Research-based topics including politicians, US States and items like the periodic table are useful applications, but perhaps only to a limited audience, such as younger students working on school products. However, this also affords Bing the opportunity to appeal to a new generation of searchers, who are highly dependent on visual cues and ease of use, as iPods and iPhones have shown us. Of course, visualization does have additional appeal to the middle demographic using those products as well.
To limit your visual search, look for a group of narrowing limits located in the left margin of a visual search category page. Here's an example for U.S. Politicians. You can narrow by:
+ Party
+ State Represented
+ First Term
+ Gender
In this case, you can also place your cursor on top of an image and identify the politician by name, party affiliation, and age.
Once you've made your selection, the politicians name is automatically placed in the search box ready conduct a web search.
Compare the politicians search with this one for Billboard's past songs. On the songs home page you can sort by song title. In the left margin you can narrow by:
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
