Seadragon/SilverLight mashup/overlay reminds me of Idealab’s (Snap’s) link previews. Honestly I find that widget/tool annoying at times. Isn’t it just another form of pop-ups?
This too will fly with advertisers but I am not sure users will be well served.

I have so little expertise WRT graphic design and/or visualization issues, I guess I could basically say that “I know nussink”. ;D So that’s NOT what I want to talk/ask about here.

My POV is that computers are good for computation — and in order to compute something, they need it in “machine readable form” (yes, Capt. James T. Kirk has a totally neat-o and courteous computer — I’ve never seen a “blue screen” on the Enterprise computer [but then again: that's scifi, right? ;]).

Well, at any rate, I see more and more how “search” is becoming more and more “bifurcated” into two segments:

1. usability (human interface) issues

2. info-retrieval (“classical” search/algorithm) issues

For example: traditional search engines do not normally do “on the fly” and/or “dynamic” searching — i.e., they do not “perform” searches on other sites (the exception being the long-not-heard-of “meta-search” engines — of which there were actually a couple quite good ones back in the day). And besides: as more and more of the data is becoming presented in some visual form (e.g. a picture of a water faucet, or perhaps even a “video” showing how the faucet functions), there is less and less data that is “grokkable” by some kind of algorithm.

I suspect that quite a few highly ranked websites have almost no “machine readable” content (i.e. content that a search engine could “grok”). If this site becomes very “popular” (has a bunch of links “pointing in”), then the relative *DEARTH* of machine readable content will allow very precise *targeting* of the small amount of information to be “configured”. At the *extreme* end of this scale would be a website where the only machine readable content is the URL of the website/webpage itself.

And that’s exactly what I’m banking on! ;D (BTW: domain names are also *especially reliable* — since each domain name is listed in the registry’s database, along with details about the domain registrant [e.g. contact details])

I guess if I had a question it would be: does anyone actually believe (IMHO “the myth”) that visual search engines are “just around the corner”? And what are the “best practices” for website development (and especially WRT so-called “SEO” issues) in a world with little to no “machine-readable” content?

Would anyone wager a less-than-book-length answer to such questions?

microsoft’s search interface is such a blatant ripoff of google that they ought to be sued. they won one look&feel suit back in the day, and they think they can copypaste everyone else’s ideas into their own borg. i am absolutely underwhelmed.

the whole POINT of cpc as google implemented by google was not really bothering the user ! it’s the user experience, dummy. this technology is just another damn thing for me to avoid with my mouse. screw that !

I hear you. We’re all about new visualization models. The point of that portion of the demo was to show that you can embed an unbounded amount of information in a finite amount of space. What you are not seeing in the static image is that we can zoom into the car ad at the bottom right, viewing details at many different scales. I’ve found that if you show a new application in a familiar context, it’s often easier to grok what’s different than if you show many new things at once.

Look for new content visualization that breaks physical constraints at a later date.

– GWF

Some of what you say is clearly true, but I don’t think that I agree with some of the assumptions and implications in your comments. First the assumption: you are looking at advertising and marketing as a “one size fits all” sort of thing. It is not. Different products and services have entirely different properties in how to best connect with a potential customer. Some product lines seek repeat business, which suggests that brand awareness is important. Other products follow a research, compare, convert pattern – which suggests both brand, targeting and direct marketing are all important. Other products are but one-time actions, which means that something more direct like paid search is best.

The point: flash and other display technologies give better ROI to those who need to build brand awareness and to support a longer purchase cycle. Text ads often help at the tail end, but they do not fulfill the entire process. Finally, many of these advertising products are sold on an impression basis, so the CTR argument is really not even appropriate.

As for Seadragon and advertising, of course this would be something entirely new: not an impression basis, nor a click basis, but something else. Also, the Photosynth page will not make much sense in static form. Take a look at http://labs.live.com/photosynth to see what it is really about.

– GWF

Why are we sticking to the physical paradigm. Their are digital benefits that formatting the same way as on paper make silly.

Let’s think about what we know:

Users click text ads in SERPS – Users ignore display ads
Text ads have high conversion (and text links have higher CTR just about everywhere) – Display ads and images, Flash have low conversion & CTR

The goal of the SERP should be to get people off of it as quickly as possible. This approach keeps users on the page.

As far as the PhotoSynth example it loks like a bad category page to me.

MSFT is doing a lot of really great things. The adCenter tools, Virtual Earth, Collections, to name a few… but I’m not as impressed as you are John with these ideas.