Re: FdL, some interesting questions from Rebecca

[Wolfgang Mueller <Wolfgang Mueller cui unige ch>]

>>>>> "GLM" == Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym canada com> writes:

GLM> One obtusely similar project that comes to mind is the
GLM> Rememberance
I do not know the word "obtusely" :-( webster does not give the
meaning I want ;-)
GLM> Agent, an emacs plugin that constantly displays "similar" documents
GLM> in a seperate window, allowing the user to rate and hone the
GLM> relevence engine.

GLM>         http://www.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/RA/

Oh, this is quite cool. I have subscribed to this. I will contact
them. 

However, it is missing on the content-based multimedia parts of
this. To see what conent-based image retrieval means, please try

http://viper.unige.ch/demo.php

(warning: currently the demo is less than stable due to some pthread
troubles. However, this is only gift-0.1.6pre waiting to go 0.1.6
Please tell me if you manage to kill it)

You will find that the results are not perfect, but the images are not
annotated. The images are found by visual characteristics. The TSR500
collection is very diverse (so there are few matches for each query,
if any), Lausanne6100 is more realistic (there are similar images for
about each image).

I think the visual part is important, as in real life when searching,
you will search for the visual aspects of a book before reading the
title, for example. In the same way, sound may be important (e.g. find
the video with this soundtrack). So I am interested in making a
framework for about any type of data.

GLM> If this technology was integrated into a Nautilus/KFM file browser,
GLM> I might actually use them!   (that, and the ability to link any file
GLM> to any other file via coloured semantic links so I can navigate a
GLM> topic map rather than try to fit my mind into a taxonomy)

This is encouraging. Would you like to contribute? Do you know people
who would be interested in contributing?

What I would like to do is to extend the GIFT to any type of files,
and to encourage people on the GUI side to talk to the GIFT in a way, 
that we can integrate all kinds of retrieval services. The GIFT is a
framework made for integrating all kinds of query engines and query
paradigms. 

Thanks a lot for the pointer,
Looking forward to hearing more from you,
Wolfgang

-- 
Wolfgang M&uuml;ller, 
assistant-doctorant ==  PhD student (2001), teaching assistant
Personal page: http://cui.unige.ch/~vision/members/WolfgangMueller.html 
Maintainer, GNU Image Finding Tool (http://www.gnu.org/software/gift)