My distributed webcam weather forecast post got me thinking about how information can be extracted from images. Wouldn't it be cool if you could calculate the average colour of an image search? Using a combination of open source tools listed below I've come up with the 'word color' tool. Basically you type a word or phrase, and it returns the average color of a search on Flickr for that word. Simple! If anyone wants to run with this and take it further, I've linked to the bits and pieces used to achieve this below. Some related tools, techniques and posts:

• Image Magick - open source image manipulation and calculation
• Wisegeek - another image / color / flickr mashup giving a hex value from a Flickr image ID
• PHP Imagecolorat() - starting pointin the PHP manual for color experiments
• Theo - nice flash single image color averaging
• drunkmenworkhere - interesting 'color of the web' project
• fractulus - search for images by color
• AntoAPI - nice ajaxy implementation of color calculating