The Solar System called Peace (click for larger image)
Tag Galaxy is a Flash based site I came across that delivers Flickr photos in 3D. What makes this site interesting is that it renders related Flickr tags as planets orbiting a central tag. For example, enter “peace” and you get a mini planetary system of Iraq, War, Anti-War, Protest, Rally and, obviously, Bush, circling around it.
Click on any of the “planets” and you are taken to a globe with all the photos tagged with that phrase. While the animation itself is smooth and rendered beautifully, getting the photos from Flickr was a slow process on my pissant SLT broadband connection.
I’m interested in this kind of application because it experiments with the manner in which we grapple with millions of images on the web. Microsoft’s Photosynth is the ultimate tool to date in this regard, and it’s not even fully launched yet.
