Tesserae (aka tiles) is a tool for creating mosaic images out of Google search results.
It's intended to highlight the subtle commonalities present in images related by a search term, and to allow you to test hypotheses about differences in word meanings by comparison of different search terms.
Sound like BS? I agree. Check out the examples at the bottom of the page for a proper introduction.
In order to use Tesserae you must have the latest version of a Webkit-based browser like Safari or Chrome. Firefox and Opera aren't supported yet, but they may be soon. Don't ask me about Internet Explorer.
When you launch Tesserae it automatically loads the mosaic for a random Crayola color. You can make your own mosaic by simply editing the text at the top of the screen and pressing enter. If you're interested in comparing two or more terms, press the plus sign at the bottom of the page to add a new panel.
To make your image mosaic, Tesserae queries Google Images for the urls of the top few pictures matching your search term. From there it downloads each image, splits it into fifteen-pixels-square tiles, and renders the resulting tiles in random order on your screen.
Under the hood it's using Javascript and HTML5 to fetch your images and draw them to the screen.
Tesserae has sloppily hacked together over a few days so it has quite a few issues. Here are some things that I want to fix eventually:
Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what's possible with Tesserae. Send me an email if you come up with a cool one that you would like to see here.