New Zealand digital designer Grant Robinson has created two incredibly fun applications that utilize Google Images. One is an addicting game called Guess-the-Google and the other is a photo montage creator called Montage-a-Google.
A lot of these types of programs are rudimentary at best, but Robinson has produced two beautifully clean and efficient applications.
This is a seriously addicting game. There are ten rounds to each game. At the start of each round you are presented with 20 images in a montage. You then have 20 seconds to guess the keyword that is common to all these Google images. In other words, what keyword would you have to use in Google Images Search to include these images in the search results pages?
You get points for each round you correctly answer, and the faster you answer the higher the points you receive. The page conveniently lists the keywords that you have already tried. At the end of the game, you can key in your name to record your score and if it is in the Top Ten for the day you will be listed on the start page.
This application uses Google’s image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords you enter. It’s not only an interesting way of browsing the net, it can also be used to create desktop pictures or even posters.
The example below is a partial shot of a montage I made with the keywords Britney Spears. She’s not that interesting to me, but as I pointed out in my last article, she was the number one search term last year, so I assume that must appeal to many readers.
The program will find up to 20 images that match your keywords and display them randomly in a grid, with some images repeating here and there to fill the squares. There is an advanced options menu that lets you choose between using the Google Images thumbnails (faster) or the high-resolution images (much slower), the grid size in pixels and the number of images per row.
I did some testing and it looks like it uses the “moderate filtering” option you can otherwise specify in your Preferences page (your Preference has no effect with this app), and grabs the first 20 images it finds. I think the Montage-a-Google advanced options menu should have two more options: one to allow the choice of which of the SafeSearch Filtering options is used, and another to select every nth image or perhaps 20 random images from the first n images. Of course using more than 20 images would be great as well, but that might present some sort of technical difficulty I’m not aware of.
Note that this requires version 7 of the Flash player or higher to run.
Mark Fleming is the founder of a new blog called Google Tutor & Advisor. Google Tutor & Advisor offers in-depth Tips, Techniques and Advice for Google Users.
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