Thursday, September 20, 2007

NOT a Paid Endorsement

SearchEngine

I swear. No one has contacted me about shilling for anything. Not that I wouldn't, necessarily. I'm just saying I haven't been contacted. Side note: Any company wishing to contact me about pitching their product/service/pyramid scheme need only email me at geek_AT_prettygeekything.com. All requests will be evaluated with regard to the "legal tender" status of the offer. Um, and also the quality/safety/legality of the product in questions. /end side note.

Let my love of Google never be called into question. I've gone on and on about their Microsoft Office replacement. Their image search possibly makes this blog a bit more visually interesting. There may be no question Google cannot answer, even if some of those answers are delivered sarcastically or by weird conspiracy theorists.

However, I have been directed at a new search engine.  Now, on the first visit one will be prompted to install a browser plug in (Microsoft Silverlight) but after that the lucky searcher will be witness to the most visually stunning search page I've ever seen.

The person who first pointed me that way did it with multiple repetitions of the description "sexy". At first, I silently mocked. However, I find myself at a loss to come up with a better term after having actually used the search engine.

On the left, one will find spinning icons for various types of searches. The results are displayed in the center and results found appropriate can be dragged onto a "glass shelf" on the right side which will store the results for later access. You can drag in links and RSS feeds and URLs and have them all stay there through later searches just waiting for you to need them again.

Just for fun, you can reset the results to a tree format which arranges them on a graphically rendered, slowly spinning 3D tree with the search results hanging at the end of the branches like information-laden fruit.

The site is still officially in Beta and the end results may change, but right now Tafiti is the very definition of a "Pretty Geeky Thing".

 

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