The saga to find a photo tag/search tool
Here are some of the more interesting Information sources that have
helped me
These are all external links - so please don't forget ot come back :)
Some Broader background on (possibly - depends on your viewpoint!) related areas
Some more recent findings (12/6/06):
- wired
- searchenginewatch
- oreillynet
- luckypix
- scilib
- research project which is attmempting to create an ideal' layout of a photo collection for the eventual purpose of quick tagging and event identification.
discusses flikr, picasa. It also includes reference to Mobile Metadata Media 2 (MMM2) framework and data
interesting ideas in this. It notes that at present, the most useful information in photos is the date and gives examples of Picasa, Flikr and their own research system. Other data/tags is very useful - but there tends to be less of it!
Other research projects are also trying to automate metdata capture as part of the photo taking or movie recording process.
For me, all of this strengthes the need to make it VERY EASY to tag photos when transferred to computer (or in camera!).
This then reduces or eliminates the need for "clever" systems, which can help, but still need users to add the tags.
So my focus is still very much on a simple bulk tagging process, which adds huge value, and then the secondary refinement process (still easy to do) that adds another level of value.
The process does need to be supported by structure (file, directry, tag categories) and tools. Hopefully a good combination of these makes them fairly inisible and lets the user easily tag/manage/organise.
- Garage Cinema Research is doing cutting edge research in media metadata, context-aware mobile media applications, automated media capture, automatic media editing, and the social uses of personal media.
- dozens of sites has dozens of sites that give an idea of how widely and diversely tagging is being used.
I keep getting carried away thinking of all of these great (but largely seperate things), and then remembering just how damm hard it is just to do photos!
... hopefully one day not to far off it will all come together :)
- Another auto tagging system based on mobile phone
There is also quite an active community of people who tag their photos using GPS location information (usualy in the EXIF metadata).
- One example
- Manual Tagging falling behind A discussion about how few photos published on the web have tags, and whether they should be tagged.
.. and more recent findings (24/6/06):
- Tagging and Why It Matters
- site recommending the use of tags to help victims of Hurricane KatrinaWhat I like about this (in addition to the public good aspect) is the published set of tags.
This increases the value of the tags by giving everyone the common understanding, and makes the step up (in my view) from the more casual approach of most tagging and folksonomies.
- some (research?) projects
- Tagging Not Likely The Killer Solution For SearchAnother interesting article on some of the negative aspects of tagging.
Some of the points do highlight the need (or usefulness) of a shared/published set of tags.
- Smarter Tagging by Uncommon Sense (for Software) has a good overview of the benefits and touches on the need for a common tag set (and by implication published).
- The article Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-up of Apples and Orange
has a good discussion, mostly plain english given the scholary distinctions it discusses, and is another useful set of views.
In fact it prompted me to realise that I had not seen any discussions on the differences between how you tag for yourself, and how communites tag on THE WEB.
This is making a distinction about how communites of people tag (eg building up folksonomies) and teh breadth of that approach,
and the different approach that one person (or family) will take to tag say their photos.
If the photos (and tags) are published to the web, then the tags can become part of the web 2.
But for the photo owner (and friends) the knowing and controlling the tags give the added value of MUCH easier browsing/searching to find "that photo".
- A good users discussion Efficient Tagging of photos in iPhoto and Flickr.