This ain't your grandad's Google. Microsoft is experimenting with a slick new search site that has a Silverlight interface. It's called Tafiti, which apparently means "do research" in Swahili. It's "designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results," according to Microsoft, as quoted on the independent LiveSide News blog. There's also a video demo at 10.
In a typical screen, the controls are on the left, and there's a ring selector like something out of a video game so you can pick from options such as Web, images, books, news, RSS feeds and so on. The results are in the middle. On the right there's a sort of "shelf" where you can drag-and-drop results you want to keep. You can also click the little tree for a tree-view, which is like a tag-cloud with mouseovers (below right).
It's pretty slick, although not as fast as working with text. Also notice that the news items are displayed in a newspapery style, while the images are formatted to look like a pretty good picture album.
But bear in mind that this is an interface exploration. I don't think you'd want to use it for any real searches because the results are frankly terrible. Maybe my choice of term didn't help -- I should have tried "Paris Hilton". Still, the equivalent Google searches -- especially for News -- knock Microsoft's into a cocked hat. Oh, and Google finds videos, too.
Update: Tafiti seems to have been written wholly or mainly by a very small external web developer, Jackson Fish. Their site says: "Thanks to everyone at Microsoft for making us a part of this project. The search folks were full of great ideas that they'd been wanting to explore, and the Silverlight team did a great job holding our hands as we wound our way through development on their new platform. We hope you enjoy this exploration." Jackson Fish was set up in Seattle last November by a former Microsoft employee. Microsoft is working with many others. Another recent example is http://mediapreview.tv/ (in Portuguese).
