Sometimes viewing pictures in rows and columns can be dull. Luckily, there are a number of services dedicated to making the photo search and viewing experience more interesting.

Check out my latest post on Mashable for 8 sites that provide a new approach to searching and looking at pictures online.

Also one that came on the comments that I would have loved to include is Tag Galaxy. Check it out.

Sometimes when we see a picture of a person on the net while browsing, we go, ‘Oh! Who is this person?’. If the name and details about the person is mentioned on that particular page, good for us. If not, what can we do except a wild guess? Think of situations such as a group picture, a random shot, etc. etc.

Now Polar Rose comes as a new face recognition service that aims to do the guesswork for us. The service, in beta now, comes as a neat Firefox plugin that will show a red flower icon whenever there is a picture of a person on a web page. When you click on that icon, there is a pop-up that displays the name of the person. See picture on the left.

If you are the nice types, you can help by adding the names of people, if Polar Rose fail to recognize the picture.

At the main Polar Rose site, you can search for a particular name and the site will take you to the webpages where the pictures of that particular person you are searching for were marked at. So for instance, if you search on my name, it will take you to my MyBloglog profile page and this blog.

What differentiates Polar rose from other image search engines? This is what its recent release had to say - A search for ‘Peter Jackson’ in today’s image search engines result in various images featuring multiple ‘Peter Jacksons’ plus a number of images not featuring people at all but instead just images close to the text ‘Peter Jackson’. Polar Rose will instead sort the entities to include faces only, and group the individual Peter Jacksons.

I think the service is innovative and definitely has a good chance to make it big, though I would like the flower icon to be smaller, as sometimes, it could be obstructive and on the face. Does it slow down my browser, as it keeps on looking for human faces on websites I open? Common sense tells me it might, but who knows. Till now, I haven’t seen any problem though.

I love this site - Cleepr. It is a clean, elegant, and no-frill search engine for music videos that aggregates content from YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Google Video.

So now instead of visiting various video sharing sites individually, all I do to get a link of my favorite new song that I hear on radio is to search on Cleepr and I am rest assure I will get some good results. From the latest Colbie Caillat’s Bubbly to yesteryears’Johnny Cash numbers, they are all there.

Next time you head to Wikipedia to search for anything, stop and redirect yourself to Qwika. This new search engine indexes 1158 wikis in 12 languages and has 21,964,380 articles in its index. Most of the search results you will find are from Wikipedia’s various language editions and Wikia pages, but it is definitely a time saver, if you are the wiki researcher types.

There is also a IE and Firefox toolbar that allows topic search, keyword search, and even unlikely features like pop-up blocker, search highlight, and site ranking displays.

So now we have Qwika for search on search on wikis, Twing for search on internet forums, Truveo and Blinkx for video and audio search, and Pipl for people search, besides the omnipresent Google. Good for researchers.

Also check out Top Online Research Resources for PR and marketing Professionals

Check out Yahoo New Globe. Set it on automatic and let the globe rotate on your browser screen showing you the important news happening across the globe. You do do it in the interactive mode as well.

The News Globe pulls out the top news new from Yahoo News Top Stories feed, runs then pass Yahoo Maps to get the latitude and longitude of each news item, and then uses 3D classes in ActionScript to get that visual experience.

I was researching for an article for Mashable (where I write) on sites that let you share documents online like Scribd, Docstoc, Yudu Freedom, Issuu, and Calameo, when I saw an interesting piece of information on Docstoc. It says the documents you upload on Docstoc gets indexed by search engines and business can use this to their advantages by uploading relevant content with links going to their sites.

Remember how Wikipedia was being used by every PR agency in the world to upload their clients information until the site said they no longer want PR agencies to contribute. Wikipedia was also a target for webmasters as they could upload their content free of cost to the site and run links to their sites. Now the site has ‘no follow’ tags to make this practice redundant.

So with Wikipedia gone, is it the turn for the document sharing sites to be the next target for PR professionals and webmasters in their attempt to gain more visibility about their clients, brands, and sites. Let’s wait and watch.

Can our documents on Docstoc and other document sharing sites really get indexed by search engines? If that be so, I see that Docstoc is already a Page Rank 6 site. Can we get some real good juice from that? I plan to do an experiment and find that out soon. Will keep everyone updated.

I have been having some interesting observations in the last few days working for a client’s online programme.

You might not be using Google Local (India) and perhaps your friends are not aware of what it is. But if you are planning to have your business seen prominently on Google Search and Google Maps, then Google Local could be the way in.

Have a look at the following picture. The screenshot is the result of the search query ‘diabetes treatment in India’. You can see the map of Diafree Treatment Center coming out on top. Now where is that map coming from? Google Local Business Listings.

This second screenshot displays the search results of the query ‘web designers Delhi’. You will see that before the organic search results come out, there are 10 links on top clubbed under the category, Local Business Results…’ Yup. From Google Local.

This third picture displays the result of the query ‘movie theatres delhi’ in Google Maps. You can notice the three markers on the map displaying Paras Theatre, Eastwood Enterprises, and Movie Times. Again from Google Local. Though out here, it might not be necessary that if you register in Google Local, your company name will come out on top on the left hand panel. Maybe this needs to be supplemented with good SEO ranking.

These are just my observations and might not be entirely correct. What do you say?

Chacha has been around for almost a year now and it is already a Webware 100 winner. For those who are new to Chacha, it is a search engine where you can chat live with human guides who will help you get relevant search results. The Chacha guides are supposed to be those who are skilled at searching online information and who are knowledgeable on the subject that you search for. Chacha describes itself as ’the ultimate fusion of computer technology and human intelligence’.

Now over my recent chats with Chacha guides and some blogosphere searches, I came to realise many interesting facts. Much has been discussed about this service already. While some praise the service, others are full of brickbats.There have been testimonials of someone recollecting how helpful a Chacha guide was in helping him get proper medical help when he was having a back pain.  Chacha guides also recollect how they have help certain users in getting their searches right for over 15 minutes when they are paid to search for only 6 minutes per query/user. Then there have been counterpoints saying that one Chacha guide didn’t even know what Digg was.

The Guides system - how it works

According to the guides, there are around 40,000 Chacha guides in the US who are paid around USD 10-15 per search hour. Anybody who is skilled at online search with good knowledge about particular subjects can apply to become Chacha guides. Upon admission, they are given a software that they can install on their home computers. This software helps them access the Chacha database of sites that they can use to search for information to answer queries of Chacha users.  The amount of time they spend searching through the Chacha database is monitored and counted and they get paid according to that. They can also refer their friends to become guides and can get referral commission out of that, just like the Amway chain.

User searches - how relevant are the search results

I did a couple of searches like ‘best chicken tikka masala in New York’ and the guides showed me a site which lists the top 10 Indian restaurants in New York. Not bad. Then I did a search for the ‘Best PR agency in India’ and it showed me the link to some PR agency that I didn’t think was the best answer.

I searched for terms like blogging hacks, which the guide asked me to define what is a hack. When I did and requested for a peekaboo post hack, he couldn’t find one. My friend did a search on my name and she got transferred to a page that said ‘ you are shown this page because you have used abusive content’ or something like that. Since when has my name become an abusive term?!

One guide told me that search queries are transferred to agents randomly. Ow! That is bad. I was hoping that Chacha would have some intelligent software solution like an intelligent call center ACD that can transfer specific queries to specific guides based on search terms and skills sets of the guides.

So if I get hooked to a smart guide, I’m lucky. Otherwise I can get frustrated explaining to the guide what I am trying to search for.

Another concern is local relevancy. Since all the guides are in US, how familiar will they be with certain searches and keywords of other countries? Say what if I want to know something like the best Manipuri resources or dishes on the Net? Not every best sites come out top of Google, but I might know of certain regional sites that has tons of information on that topic.  

Why would I search in Chacha

One question I often wonder is why should I search in Chacha - the Chacha guides takes times to search for results on their end. Why cant I just Google it? Maybe those who use Chacha are those who don’t know much about Internet searches or who are plain lazy.  Other than that, why would somebody search on Chacha? Maybe someone who has searched what he could on Google and still has not found what he was looking for.

Looking from this angle, maybe then most of the searches that comes to Chacha will be advanced searches - not ones that can be done easily on Google. So we might need specialised guides - who are skilled in certain areas. So if I want to search for something on blogging, may I should be given the option to choose or get connected to a guide who knows pretty much on blogging and knows various sites about blogging. For instance, if I become a Chacha guide, I might be able to search quickly and provide information on social media or PR related queries.

Now when users are looking for advanced answers, they might not necessarily be looking for answers rightaway. Maybe they can wait for sometime- say a day. So instead of just searching through the data base that moment, Chacha can give an additional option wherein users can send questions to Chacha on the email. This question can be circulated among Chacha guides who are good in that particular subject and their answers can be sent back to the searcher.

Chacha also need to internationalise its system. By this , I mean hire guides from out side the US. Maybe a chacha.co.in for India. This will help search more relevant local information rather than searching everything from US. Also, employment opportunities for many.

Overall, it is a good service - and many people like it apparently. Nice and unique idea. Only that I need to ask myself now - can I rely on Chacha everytime I need an answer that Google cant provide?

By the way, Chacha also has a offshoot called ChaCha Results - directory of quality results of searches done on Chacha. This is one site where webmasters would like to get their sites added to.