245623 Resource 187691 21 21 1258647330775 1258648120431 Controlled Innovators See Things Differently

Experimental prototype applications are rarely viable commercial products. But that’s not the point.

<a title="Google Image Swirl" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/explore-images-with-google-image-swirl.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img title="Google Image Swirl" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="151" alt="Google Image Swirl" src="http://faseidl.com/docs/image-swirl-example_3.png" width="240" align="right" border="0"></a>As I was reading Garet Rogers’s article, <a title="Google Image Swirl: Looks neat, but useless" href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1618" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google Image Swirl: Looks neat, but useless</a>, I was struck initially by how strongly I disagreed.  But after spending a few minutes thinking about it, I realized we are looking at it from different directions. <a title="Google Image Swirl" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/explore-images-with-google-image-swirl.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google Image Swirl</a> is an experimental project focused on image categorization.  It really has nothing to do with "swirling" images around.  Google could have presented related images in some other UI, but the animated swirl is visually appealing and, yes, fun.  But that's not the point. The point is that they are categorizing images based on image content.  Not just images that are related because they look similar--but because they represent ideas that are similar. Imagine a <a title="Mt. Rainier Wonderland Trail Photos | August 2009" href="http://faseidl.com/public/item/243776">photo of Mt. Rainier</a> and a <a title="The Little Tahoma News" href="http://www.nps.gov/archive/mora/kids/student.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pencil sketch of Mt. Rainier</a>.  If a computer could match those up as related images, that would be impressive.  Or a <a title="photo of Jay Leno" href="http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/images-3/jay-leno-smiling.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">photo of Jay Leno</a> and a <a title="hand-drawn caricature of Jay Leno" href="http://www.magixl.com/caric./starsb/leno.gif" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hand-drawn caricature of Jay Leno</a>... that would be impressive. Google labs is a petri dish for innovation.  You shouldn’t look at experimental applications of new ideas and judge them against a mainstream application's business requirements. To do so is missing the point. Years ago, my wife worked on a team at Bell Labs that built the first "object oriented" telephone switching system using an experimental programming language they called "C++".  That first system supported three telephone numbers.  That first prototype application would fail miserably as a commercial phone system.  But that wasn’t the point. When an innovator looks at experimental research, she sees beyond the prototype to the possibilities the prototype inspires. 10 application/xml false innovation MySmartChannels/6 (mailto:info@myst-technology.com; MyST Blogsite MetaWeblog API 6.00.0828) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 205.145.142.200 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 245675 Resource 188081 173239 21 1258727528645 1258733063440 Controlled RE: Innovators See Things Differently

As a public librarian, I would push your concept even further. Web applications are used by a wide variety of users with differing goals and expertise. Visual search methods for images and text are highly valued by many users because such methods identify both meaning and relationships. 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 245681 Resource 188081 173239 21 1258733906855 1258734072641 Controlled RE: Innovators See Things Differently

Indeed, innovation touches many use cases.

Thanks, Terry.  You're suggesting another idea which is also important to understand: it is often difficult to predict the impact of innovative research. In this case, the Google research scientists (I'm guessing) were focused primarily on the deep science of image recognition and categorization.  The "swirl" visualization was (likely) a secondary concern.  Yet, as you rightly point out, there are use cases where the swirl directly addresses a real business requirement.  This is a concrete example of why I so much liked the quote of may favorite fictional private detective, Darryl Zero "When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good." 10 application/xml false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web