Google Labs is the place where popular services like Google Maps and Google News were deployed as an experiment in a first instance. Now, two new experiments were added to the Google Labs inventory: Similar Images and Google News Timeline. These new experimental Google services are intended to improve the user experience while searching web based information, during any Internet browsing session.

The Similar Images feature was introduced to simplify the refining of results obtained after running a search query with Google Image Search. Due to the fact that a specific definition of a certain image is hard to create, an Image Search query returns a high number of results which are difficult to browse for the selection of a desired image.

But with the Similar Image facility, user is now able to refine the search results by clicking on a link labeled “Similar images”. The search will be narrowed based on an existing result, therefore the user will get similar images (from the visual point of view) with no effort.

The next video tour will show you more details about the way in which Similar Image feature can be used:

On the other hand, the Google News Timeline experiment will provide a better accessibility to the content published through Google News service and other data sources. The information is organized based on chronological principles on a zoomable and draggable graphical timeline.

The timeline can be set to the desired moment of time and the corresponding news links published at that time will be shown in the browser window automatically. According to the Google Official Blog: “Google News Timeline can present results from lots of different sources, including both recent and archival news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, and sports scores and media like music and movies. You can view multiple sources simultaneously, allowing each source to lend context to the others.”

Google News Timeline and Similar Image experiments can be used for free from the Google Labs website. The new Google Labs website is made with Google App Engine and has been redesigned recently. Alternatively, you can check Google Labs updates through the RSS feed or an iGoogle gadget.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Google methods & tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.