Open call for HomePage Ideas

Okay everyone.  We hear you loud and clear.  Some of you don't like our new homepage...;-).  I want you to help me redesign it. 

Here are the details:

Reward:
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1) Fame: You will get a credit at the bottom of our homepage to your blog or consulting site (this will stay up until it is redesigned).

2) Fortune (well potentially ;-): 1000 Riya stock options - details will be provided to winner

3) Love: You will have my undying gratitude and I will brag about you to everyone I know and on this blog  ...;-)

The winner will get all three

Criteria
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The winning design will be choosen by me and will meet the following criteria

a) Highlight Riya's new focus on Photo search

b) Highlight Riya's differentiation vs. Google and Yahoo Images - Re that we use face recognition,
text recognition, Image similarity (new), and face similarity (new).

c) Since face and image similarity allow you to initiate a search by simply saying "More like this and less like this", I believe this will change image search.  There are too many things you just can't describe in words and hence don't search in image search (try to describe a Persian Rug you just saw on ebay (cross stitch, red 1" border, etc - it is very hard to say in an unambiguous way).  Hence, to only have a text input box doesn't make sense.  I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words and click on a photo and say "More like this" to start a search is like submitting a 1000 words which you would never type into a small search box.  Focus on this criteria.  I suspect the winning entry will do something really innovative here.

e) Riya will also allow you to search by color and refine by color so how would you integrate it.

f) So we are really saying you can search by text, search by saying "More like this" and by browsing a taxonomy heirarchy.  You may choose to limit the homepage to just text and browse or just text and similarity search.  Your call.

g) Keep the Riya colors (green and yellow), font, and Logo the same

h) Riya reserves the right to choose none - but the best submission will still recieve the 1000 shares (unless you are the only submission...;-).

i) We will look at the traffic numbers once the new homepage goes live. If the search results drop or stop growing as it was the previous weeks, we will likely change it back.

j) Please note that most likely the design will be taken and then integrated (so we will make some changes to even the best design). If you are fussy about this, don't participate.

Timeline & Rules
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All submissions are due two weeks from today (June 25th)
You will need to submit the photoshop file, jpeg preview, and HTML/CSS (if possible - if not we'll convert it).
You will need to sign a Riya consulting agreement which will assign the rights to the work and derivative work to us.  Anyone emailing in a submission will be assumed to agree to this assignment of rights.  If you want to review the consulting agreement ahead of submission, just email me and I'll send it to you for review.

Email submissions to: homepagegenius at Riya.com

Comments

[Mario Sundar]

Whoa! Way to go, Munjal!

This, I didn't expect, but nevertheless it sure is a worthy challenge with some great incentives.

Wishing you the very best!!

-Mario

[Guk]

Hello Munjal,

I like the homepage of Riya, and I think it is very clean and so on. What I suggest is you to make that search box a bit bigger :), and more emphasized in the design. The rewards are very nice :), good luck.

[Baher]

Now this is how to dynamicaly react to issues, way to go Munjal.

[Bill]

Sorry Munjal, this smacks of desperation. It seems to the outside world (OK it seems to me) that you guys are losing your internal convictions.

I hope it works out for you, and I realise that you are trying to turn constructive criticism into useful ideas, but some things have to come from your own team, not from a committee of blog commenters.

[Sridhar Kondoji]

Hi Munjal,
I will write little bit about website and more on related technology.

Website: The moment a visitor is on your site, he gets the feeling that it is just another flickr/myspace website.
Changes i propose:
1) Use a bigger search box
2) Remove all those albums (They are not conveying any information and at best are driving users away from your website). Instead just use 2 large images (image from nature and a celebrity) and convey what your technology can do.

Technology: Don't depend on user tagging system. Users are not good at describing things. Atleast this is true with large percentage of users and they may not totally understand the tagging system at all.
Auto-tag: Your technology is using few variables like time stamps, file names and directory hierarchy for tagging. Most of the user base are not good at creating meaningfull file names, directory structure etc. So most relevant tags are only time stamps.
So, only searches based on time are relevant in the existing technology.

What i propose is: A solution based on open hardware and software architecture. Digital cameras should have hardware and software to extract more data apart from graphic picture. They should collect surrounding audio, should be able to process text from surroundung environment like billboards, road signs etc and store them along with graphic picture in a format readable by your technology.
This extra information can give you more data to search on and give more reliable results.
You will have to collaborate with third party content providers and also digital camera manufacturers.

Example 1: I am at Grand Canyon and taking pictures. There will be lots of audio content in that area which can convey the information that this is grand canyon. Digital camera needs software/hardware to process that data and store them in the picture.
Example 2: I am in a dowtown and taking pictures. The digital camera should be able to process sign boards and extract location details and store them with the picture.
Example 3: I am attending a birthday party and taking pictures. There will be lots of audio content to reliable say that the pictures taken are of birthday party.

What iam saying is, there are lots of other sources of information surrounding the picture which existing photo search implementations are missing. If you extend your technology to extract and process that data, then you are a winner.
I hope i am clear and not distracting your main goal.
Thanks
Sridhar Kondoji

[hkmarket]

I found one photography site.
It can help you because it’s got some great search tools.
Please check out http://xcavator.net/

[SEO hotel website]

This is a really good resource for bloggers. It answers a number of questions I have had on my mind and it is very nicely written.