SEMEDIA Showcase - Research Applications
Search Environments for Media
TagExplorer (Yahoo!)
Overview
TagExplorer is a tool for browsing Flickr photos using textual keywords -- a.k.a. tags. The TagExplorer helps the user browsing the collection by generating a cloud of words related to the user's query. The user can use the suggested words to further refine her query or to browse related topics. To make the tag clouds more functional and easy to use the TagExplorer organizes the tag cloud by groupping together words with similar meaning.
Features
The TagExplorer is a web based application written in PHP. The Figure (below) shows a screenshot of the system. The system UI has 6 main parts:
- A: A query input box where the user can post queries
- B: A query action box where the current query is shown and the user can remove query terms (by clicking the x sign).
- C: A cloud of terms where the user can choose query terms to add to her query (clicking the + sign) or post a new query using the term (clicking the term itself)
- D: A help on how to use the system
- E: Photo results – top relevant photos for the query
- F: Photo details panel where the user can view details of a particular photo
Suppose the user decides to browse photos from London (Figure). The user is of course shown the top photos relevant to her query (Figure-E). Additionally, the TagExplorer shows a cloud of related tags, such as England, United Kingdom, Southwark, City, Big Ben, London Eye, Thames, party and travel (Figure-C). The tags England, United Kingdom, Southwark, and City are grouped together as locations; the tags Big Ben, London Eye, and Thames are grouped together as subjects; and the tags party and travel are grouped together as activities (Figure-C).
Given the tag-cloud of related tags the user can continue her browsing by choosing to add to her query a term from the tag cloud (click on the respective green plus) or start a new query based on one of the tags in the cloud (click on the tag). Given the new query a new tag-cloud is generated and the photo list is updated. For example, suppose the user chooses to add the tag Thames to her London query. The tag will now show different tag-cloud relevant to the new query, including the tags Tower Bridge, bridge, river, South Bank, etc. Now the user can again choose to add tags to her query or browse other tags. This process can then -- in principle -- continue forever.
Demonstration
Click image for real-time demo
Links
