Your daily flickr photo slideshow

A nice entertainment during a break, especially for flickr fans: flickrvision shows the current uploads to flickr from all over the world. This endless slide show gives you a feeling for the size of the flickr community.  And (mostly) nice and random photos too.

Faceted Metadata Search – an new approach to user experience

Lars wrote a post about his faceted search option for Mindquarry tasks in version 1.2. By his description you may get easy a glue how it works. That seems to be a simple (but useful) step to the task feature.

But faceted search is a solution on top of technologies. Microsoft is developing that right now as a solution to compete to other search engines like Google.

Faceted search is an option to the general search dilemma, that you (the searcher) must have exact knowledge about the search content description to find exactly what you search. For example if you search a suitcase with tiger pattern you would get the operating system “tiger” (Mac OS) , the animal “tiger” and much more overwhelming information.

Even plain full text search is not a perfect solution. try to search a telephone-No, like 777-6330, you’ll get results with telephone-, article- and stock- numbers.

Faceted search is different,

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LEGO & the long tail

On Chris Andersons Blog he’s reporting about a new tool “LEGO Factory“. It is the company’s service that allows you to design your own models and have the parts sent to you in a cool Lego kit-style box.

I think that that is an idea just with zeitgeist. Allowing people to get exactly what they want, not paying for unnecessary pieces. And it’s targeting the creativity of people as well as their ambitions for individuality.

However, as C. anderson reports, that example is still suffering from too difficult to use software, even the LEGO Digital designer. You have to download and install software first, then to figure out how it works, then upload again and take the order. For my feeling far too much steps, far to difficult.

But I’m shure they will improve that constantly. At least that long tail service makes the difference to competition offers.

LEGO Digital Designer

Originally uploaded to flickr by Phil Sherry.