Visual search engine Searchme has a sexy new iPhone app that brings its signature Cover-Flow-like interface to the phone's 3.5-inch display. Search results come in the form of large thumbnails with short content summaries underneath. To browse through them you simply flick your finger across the screen, just like you would with album covers in the phone's iPod application.
The app also supports pinch gestures for zooming in on thumbnails. This lets you see the the details of a page before visiting it in Safari--something that can be done with a simple double tap on any result. This may seem like a trivial feature, but it can be immensely helpful, and in some cases even prevent you from having to visit the site at all. In my case I was able to pull up a restaurant's address just by zooming in, saving me some time and data.
Searchme knows when you've flipped it on its side and will display the search results in gorgeous Cover Flow-style.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The application makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer, and can tell when you've got it in landscape mode. When flipped, you get an additional two thumbnails on the screen, and it does away with the summaries entirely. It's also marvelously fun to zoom back and forth.
This app is definitely more than eye candy. Over a 3G connection it took just 3 seconds to bring up search results that I was able to flip through, and another 15 to stream in the thumbnails. During that loading time I was able to browse through the titles and summaries with zero lag which is really impressive.
Searchme is free and can be found in the app store (iTunes link).
Previous Searchme coverage:
Searchme tries music streaming to attract users
Search interfaces of tomorrow you can try today
Searchme nabs $31 million from Google backer, others
Visual search is one of my favorite spaces to watch (literally), mostly because people are trying to do new things with it all the time. While big players such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo continue to tweak their engines for user's eyes and clicks, there are some little guys putting together tools that are both easier and a little more fun to use. oSkope is one of those tools. It lets you search for Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and stuff for sale on Amazon and eBay on a giant grid of thumbnails. You can click on each one to glean more detail, and get a quick link to its page of origin.
If you're used to using one of the big search engines, it's worth checking out oSkope if only for its narrow focus and sorting features, which let you reorganize the results in several different ways on the fly. One of my favorites is the graph view, which will plot out the results on a quadrant based on date and ranking popularity. This is especially cool with Amazon results, as you can see which products are older along with how much they cost. For photos and videos, you're likely to get more use out of the grid and pile modes, which will organize shots either in perfect order or shuffle them together like a real stack of photos.
At first glance, this reminded me a lot of BrightQube, which offers a similar service for people looking for stock photography. It's also got some of the crazy visual flair of Microsoft's Tafiti service, although without the need to have Silverlight installed. Whether people are going to flock to this over one of the big players is doubtful, although I'm certainly bookmarking it for later. The YouTube search alone is worth the price of admission, and with a little elbow grease you might be able to find a good deal using the eBay and Amazon layers.
Sort through pictures, videos, and products on popular services with oSkope's visual search.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
A new alternative search engine that caught my eye this morning is SearchCrystal, a very experimental-looking tool that combines multiple search engines in a rich visual design. Each search engine gets its own color code, and results that show up in a large circle. When an item is listed on more than one search engine, it's given its own geometric shape showing which engines picked it up, along with lines that link up identical results. The goal is to give you a visualized results page that lets you compare a few engines at a time without having to scroll down one large list.
Results in SearchCrystal show up in a number of ways, including this neat clustery mashup mode.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The results are split up into five different areas--one for each search engine. These engines vary by what you're searching for, be it photos, videos, news, or blog postings. In the case of blogs, SearchCrystal will pull results from Sphere, Bloglines, Google Blog search, Technorati, and BlogPulse. There's also a mode to just view Wikipedia articles. Each string shows the top 10 results in order, with the ones closer to the middle of the sphere being more important. The end result makes it look similar to a dartboard.
The one real hurdle with SearchCrystal is that it's slow. Most searches took about ten seconds a pop, with the longest taking just over 20 seconds. This is just simply too long for a casual search. Likewise, it has a learning curve--you're probably going to stare at the swarm of results the first time you try it out before knowing what you're supposed to do. While not difficult to pick up, I can see someone like my mom not knowing where to start.
As usual, there's a Facebook app for SearchCrystal. You can also e-mail it, or embed it in a blog or site with the query of your choice, which I've done after the break.
Related: Five weird ways to see search: Quintura, Clusty, and more
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(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Just got a ping from the developer of Listpic, a service that provides a visual interface into Craigslist. Want to see all the motorcycles for sale in your area? Or houses for rent? This tool will display just the pictures. Clicking on one displays a pop-up of the listing. Clicking again pops you over to Craigslist. It also works with personals. Very easy to use, very useful, and a lot of fun. Thumbs-up from me.
It also made me think: how cool would it be if Like.com searched Craigslist (and eBay) in addition to the online retailers it currently scans? It would be a great way to shop for bargains.
(Credit:
Riya)
Earlier this year, Riya launched an extremely cool face-recognition system for your family photos. Today at the Web 2.0 Conference (but not during the Launchpad sessions), Riya said it is launching its next product, Like.com, a visual catalog and search tool for consumer goods.
The site lets you search for items by keyword. Once you find a picture of one you like, you can find more that look like it. You can also adjust sliders to tell the system that color is more important to you than shape (or vice versa), and you can zoom in on a feature of the product and search for more products that share that feature. In the demo I saw, CEO Munjahl Shah zoomed in on the three subdials of a watch to find more watches with the same configuration. Robert Scoble of The ScobleShow also got a demo. See his video.
The site is launching with data on shoes, handbags, watches, and jewelry. Like.com has catalog info from 200 sites and has over 2 million products, Shah told me.
Clothes, furniture, plants, and other goods are coming. Also in the future, you'll be able to upload your own photos and use them to kick off searches, and you'll also be able to take a picture from the Web (say, of a celebrity at an awards show), zoom in on their clothes, shoes, watch, or glasses, and find items that look like what they are wearing.
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