Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Chrome shows promise

After an initial underwhelming test of Google's Chrome browser, memory issues with other browsers have forced me back for a second look. There are now workarounds to adding the likes of Delicious buttons (simple bookmarks do fine), but the main attractions are the load speed of pages and the independent tabs which can crash in isolation.

The result - less 'not responding' errors, a quicker browser and once you get used to the UI a compelling competitor. 

I'm still sticking with Firefox in the main, but will certainly be making more and more use of Chrome.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Searching in colour

Google is adding colour filters to its image search. To use it look for the 'all colors' bar underneath the search box in image search and click on your colour.

The colour palette available is pretty limited, so it's questionable just how useful this is when you could add colour into your search term in the first place. For some, however, it could be a good way to filter your results quickly when trying to find the best colour of an object.

Either way it's a small step towards visual search, such a challenge in search where the search engine will analyse an object for its meaning beyond the metadata available (e.g. photo of red car only tagged as 'car').