Google search with images - how I did it...

Okay, so not a catchy title, but a fairly descriptive one...

I've been toying around with some ideas on how to improve search engine results. I really like the way the image search on search.live.com brings back results. If this idea could be shared with the way web pages are displayed, then it would be a really cool web search...

So I spent a while looking at all the components needed...

1) a web spider (to index all the pages)
2) imaging software to screen shot the web pages
3) a cool web interface to view the results.
4) somewhere to host the software.

I wrote a very basic (but working) c# demo, but (free) hosting is the problem.

So I started from scratch; is it possible to do all the above, but only write a few lines of code and have it hosted???....

The answer is yes, but just like every compromise, there are limitations...

Lets start again, but pick up free or existing software...

1) use google's search API , its free and I wont say easy, but not impossible to use.
2) websnapr offer a free service of imaging web pages..
3) hmmmm this is an area of limitation...
4) erm, lets see if we can use blogger...

The result is this.... Google Search with Images

layout.,.

I'm playing around with the layout, so if it looks a bit strange, 'bare' with me.

Beta version released: v0.2

I've released an inital beta version. Like all beta versions, there are a number of issues;
a) only 8 results are returned from the google search api, I'm looking into extending this.
b) the return results could be formatted a little nicer.

Feed free to post feedback.

Mark