Comments on: Search interfaces of tomorrow you can try today

There's more to search than text results. But many of the alternatives are still mediocre at best.

[mukundmohan]

Rafe
somehow they seem like they are all lipstick on a pig.

At the end of the day relevant, simple and fast results will beat any and all eye candy.

[Hunnter2k3]

Have to agree with mukundmohan there, these are pretty much just eyecandy and would end up wasting more time, with ONE exception: Piclens.
Now that one actually looks really useful, shame they don't support more browsers though.
I'd say Viewzi looks pretty interesting too.

A big open view of several sites at the same time is what really needs to be done, rather than maybe one main view and other smaller sites placed to the side.

When internet speeds get faster in the next few decades, i would love to see how searching would evolve on it.

[Cheese McBeese]

Of all of them, I use Viewzi most regularly. It was too slow at first but seems to have been injected with caffeine lately. I think Viewzi will take off once they let people make their own custom views, which basically means a custom selection of sources and display format.

[raphinou]

Why not search in a completely other way sometimes and discover websites deeper in the search results?
Take a look at http://www.luckyasme.com , also based on Yahoo BOSS. It'll give you a page deeper in the search results that you might not have visited with another search engine.

[PopGist]

Rafe, you may be interested in this popgist.com search engine that displays Yahoo search results in threaded context.

[AndrewRich]

The Glims add-on for Safari ( http://www.machangout.com/ ) adds thumbnails to Yahoo and Google searches. The addition of a thumbnail of each search result makes it easier to see if a particular result is relevant.

[hawkeyeaz1]

Why do we need visual search for text strings? It doesn't make it any faster or more efficient for us to find the content unless it is a rare case where you are trying to relocate a site by sight.

What would be real;y innovative (and Google among others are working on it) is leaving text strings mostly behind and using voice, images, etc as the input to get the output.

"Computer, find out what type of spider this is." {raises spider}

[JVazq]

What about tafiti.com? It's based on silverlight, and looks cool.

[myles taylor]

I was just saying that one of the things I love the most about Google is the lack of visual aids. I like the simple, text-based search results with the non-intrusive ads that are actually relevant. I think Google is one of the few places where I look at the displayed ads; everywhere else they are just annoying and about as desirable as a popup. I don't use adblock because I know that ads are what makes the internet run, but I use Google because of it's speed and simplicity. If they ever do add more graphics to it or any useless eye-candy, I hope they keep a "Classic" option for people like me who don't want more eye-candy.

[evanxxxm]

if google changes its interface to something complex, thats a drawback
Google is like my home, i visit more than 10+ times per day to search results. to make a contrast, its like orgainizing your room, its not necessary true that everyone likes putting posters, electronics, photo albums...etc declarations to make yourself more "artist" or "cool". on the other hand, clean and neat is what i am looking for

[Someone-else]

I've downloaded Cooliris, does help on google images.
but I just couldn't get it to work on youtube, anything I put there it says it couldn't find, including when I put it on the regular youtube search, I do find results but when i clcik the cooliris button, it says the site isn't supported

[goroz]

Take a look at this new engine-- OXY Search:

http://www.oxysearch.com/search.aspx?q=Cnet&st=web

It's a meta engine with Google, Yahoo, ASk and MSFT but also adds other search verticals. Universal style results page. It's got more content than other meta engines like Dogpile. More interesting.

[jalis]

I'm really surprised no one mentioned KartOO (kartoo.com)

Yes, the graphics are by contemporary standards a little weak, but the grouping concepts behind the search engine are unique and kinda neat - and will lead you to other concepts and sources as wel. Give it a try!

Jalis

[jennyatcooliris]

Hi Rafe,

Thanks so much for writing about us! We truly appreciate it!

I'm so glad to hear that you enjoy using Cooliris! We've got lots more in store, so stay tuned.

Thanks again,
Jenny & The Cooliris Team