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Google launches new image and news search tools

Nick

Nick

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Google labs logoGoogle Labs has finally rolled out its Similar Images tool which allows users to perform searches with the actual images themselves. At the same time, the company released News Timeline which gives a chronological view of news events.

Similar Images works in a similar way to Google Image Search the difference being that some images have the option “Similar Images” below them. Clicking on this option brings-up all the images that look very similar to it. I can see this tool being useful if a particular image isn’t quite as good as you wanted because Similar Images will give you very similar images but with slightly different angles and quality. Or, if you’re shopping around for something you like, similar images will help you find other products that look similar to it. The drawback is that not all images have enough similar ones cached in order to offer you the option of Similar Images as I found with a search for “Softonic”.

Google Similar Images

News Timeline is a more powerful tool and will appeal to historians, researchers or news junkies wanting to view news chronologically. You can choose to view news from anything within the past day to the past decade. Choosing the decade option is the best illustration of how useful the tool is giving you an encyclopedia-style timeline of the major news stories, front covers and events that shaped a particular topic. It’s going to be a great tool for students and historians to discover when a term first started appearing. For example, it’s fascinating to search for the word “internet” and go back in News Timeline to see when it first started to appear (although rather confusingly I found it started appearing in the 1920’s!). You can also choose which sources to base your searches on. The default settings are Time Magazine and Wikipedia Events but you can change the settings to add blogs, newspapers, and magazines of your choosing making it a truly customisable and powerful search tool.

Google News Timeline

There’s no Google video guide to News Timeline yet but you can check out their painfully cheesy guide to Similar Images below although be warned – it looks like some kind of road safety video from the 1970s.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fD2t4d2Ln4[/youtube]

Nick

Nick

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