The authors designed a thing called MediaGLOW (Graph Layout Organization Workspace). This is an interactive workspace for sorting and viewing pictures. MediaGLOW allows people to view photos by similarity by letting the user group photos in a stack, then similar photos will group around the "stack." The distance that pictures group around the stack can be determined by either picture similarity or geographic distance. To normalize how far pictures are from the stack so that they dont tend to cluster at a single distance the authors find the percentage of similarity.
This research is important because it advances how people interact with media and are able to view and sort their large libraries of pictures. The downside is that this seems purely recreational and not useful to anyone that is working with pictures seriously. Future work should include synchronizing with online vendors like flikr or facebook.
I don't know that this would be completely useless. I have a pretty large photo library and I want every method I can get to search it. I use ratings, keyword tagging, facial recognition, albums, and events. So what's next? I'm ready to try whatever I can get.
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