Microsoft redefines the search interface...

Tafiti - Microsoft redefines the search interface with Silverlight

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).