Novelist James A. Michener once said, “I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” I would venture to say that you could substitute the phrase Web 2.0 apps for words. Well, at least I could…”I love Web 2.0 apps. I love the swirl and swing of Web 2.0 apps as they tangle with human emotions.” In other words, I am constantly amazed by the new applications and resources that continue to evolve on the web.
Have you had a chance to play with Google Image Swirl, for example? This new Google mashup clusters similar images based on characteristics found in both the text surrounding images, as well as the images themselves. Image Swirl results look a lot like the thumbnails presented in regular image search results, but you can see that there are many images stacked behind the topmost result. When you click on a thumbnail the stack expands to show you a group of images, related by visual characteristics. Click on one of the new images to expand the search further. The new search is based on textual and conceptual associations.
Image Swirl currently works for about 200,000 of the most popular image queries. You can tell which queries have Image Swirl results when you start typing in the search box, as available searches will auto-complete, similar to Google Suggest. Try a couple of the suggested searches…let me know what you think.
Actually, Google Swirl reminds me of a similar code I shared a few weeks ago that you can use to change the URL of a YouTube video. When you replace the word ‘watch’ in the URL of any YouTube video to warp.swf your YouTube leads to to other YouTube sources based on the video you were originally watching. Sadly, when I tried out the feature as I wrote this post it did not appear to be working any longer. 
Another Swirrl app that you might like to give a twirl is Swirrl (try to repeat that phrase 3 times fast!). Swirrl is a handy application that makes it easy for you (and team members if you so choose)to store, share, edit and analyze information. It’s like a mini wiki. The free version allows you to create or upload up to 100 items/files or 20 MB. Each item you store in Swirrl has its own web page and own URL, making it easy to link your data up and browse around it. You can upload files, input data in an online spreadsheet, or develop a webpage/test using a simple web-based word processing tool. You can invite individuals or a team of individuals to collaborate on any of the documents created or uploaded to your space. While I did not take a lot of time to explore every nuance of the application, I can tell you that overall I found it intuitive and easy to use. It would be a great application to share with students who are working on a project together. I wish I had a similar tool at my disposal years ago when students collaborated to write historical newspapers.