Zoetrope: New Web Crawler Allows For Searching, Analyzing The Ever-Changing Web
Does Adobe think they can out-Google Google? Perhaps. The company is involved with Zoetrope, a joint project with researchers at the University of Washington. What they're building is a tool that allows for manipulating the web over time. Instead of the snapshot of the web you see today when googling, Zoetrope will let anyone use keyword searches to discover archived web information and look for patterns in the data found.
About Zoetrope
As with the Internet Archive, the data in Zoetrope's database is a backup of the entire web, including those pages which have changed over time. But this archive won't be limited to the somewhat inconsistent periodic snapshots of the web's content like the Internet Archive offers. It will encompass everything.
Using the intuitive Zoetrope interface, a user could compare historical changes of various data through time by comparing snapshots of different pages on the web. Analyzing different, changing elements on web pages, side-by-side and over a period of time is downright difficult today - if not impossible. But Zoetrope makes it happen.
The process is done using Zoetrope "lenses" to draw boxes around elements, connect data from one site to another, and pull up charts of relevant data, all while manipulating a slider to scroll back and forth through time. That may sound hard, but if you watch this video, you'll see that it looks surprisingly easy.
For Everyone, Not Just The Computer Savvy
In a way, this project is similar to Google's new visualization API, which lets developers use historical web data to build charts, graphs, gadgets, and the like. However, where Google's tool is aimed at the technically savvy programmer, Zoetrope, on the other hand, is for the average user. Says Dan Weld, a UW computer science and engineering professor who worked on the project, "Zoetrope is aimed at the casual researcher. It's really for anyone who has a question."
As noted in the Washington University article on the project, example uses of Zoetrope could range from the basic: checking historical rankings of favorite players on a sports team, to the advanced: comparing daily air pollution levels in Beijing to number of world's records broken each day in the 2008 Olympics.
"Your browser is really just a window into the Web as it exists today," said Eytan Adar, University of Washington computer science and engineering doctoral student who's also a co-author of the research paper on the project.
"When you search for something online, you're only getting today's results...This is really a new way to think about storing information on the Web."
The researchers hope to offer Zoetrope for free as early as next summer.
Image credits: Color, Torley; Others, University of Washington
Comments
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"...A zoetrope is a device that produces an ILLUSION of action from a rapid succession of static pictures..."
Source - Wikipedia
My skepticism is founded on two premises:
1. Anyone remember Cuil?
2. What's to prevent the people at google doing this tomorrow, and not "...as early as next summer."
Mike
I tweet @pop_art
http://DigitalArtPrintGallery.com
"Omnia Vanitas"
Posted by: Mike Darnell | November 21, 2008 8:19 AM
"...A zoetrope is a device that produces an ILLUSION of action from a rapid succession of static pictures..."
Source - Wikipedia
My skepticism is founded on two premises:
1. Anyone remember Cuil?
2. What's to prevent the people at google doing this tomorrow, and not "...as early as next summer."
Mike
I tweet @pop_art
http://DigitalArtPrintGallery.com
"Omnia Vanitas"
Posted by: Mike Darnell | November 21, 2008 8:22 AM
I think google may be getting too big for their britches, It would be nice to have someone that would be able to compete with them.
Posted by: Dan_N | November 21, 2008 8:35 AM
ideais not a new one. Similar browser was already introduced:
http://www.dl.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~adam/ht08.pdf
Posted by: smittj
|
November 21, 2008 9:04 AM
What is the URL to Zoetrope? The only zoetrope I see on the internet is a site for filmmakers.
Posted by: filmalem | November 21, 2008 9:08 AM
This is unbelievably useful! Can't wait to try out!
Posted by: Jorge Escobar
|
November 21, 2008 10:03 AM
this is one of the stronger semantic applications i've seen so far, as well as a highly impressive take on the entire browsing experience (side by side, zoom in etc). to me it seems that browsing over time is just one of of the abilities, maybe not even the most interesting one.
this technology can help a naive user to build a highly effective "screen-scraper", much better than any I've seen so far - as it allows to connect page elements together intuitively and create a mashup-scraper in seconds.
in addition, using the links users create between content and the way they interact with it during analysis has a huge potential for becoming a way of building a folksonomy of semantics information about the web.
I am thoroughly impressed.
Posted by: assapin | November 22, 2008 5:12 AM
see on the internet is a site for filmmakers.
Posted by: makale | November 24, 2008 3:24 AM
This is unbelievably useful! Can't wait to try out!
Posted by: 2009 Yerel Seçimleri | November 24, 2008 7:45 AM