Microsoft unveils Tafiti, the animated search engine

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Microsoft Corporation has launched Tafiti (which means "do research" in Swahili), a test search engine powered by the software giant’s Live Search and Silverlight technologies. The whole “search experience” is animated and although more intuitive, it is slower than your average search engine. Search results are presented in the center. On the left hand side is your search bar, which initially starts in the middle, along with a carousel of the five categories of search results: Web, Images, News, Feeds and Books. Switching between the five types of search results can be done on the fly. On the right hand side is a column for saving your search results. After dragging and dropping the search results to the “shelf”, they can be labelled and either blogged or e-mailed away. Under the FAQ section, Microsoft notes that Tafiti is “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”.

View: Walkthru

Link: Tafiti

#1 stifler6478 on 23 Aug 2007 - 06:05

That's pretty cool, actually.

-Spenser

#2 Rudy on 23 Aug 2007 - 06:11

lame you need silverlight

(1 reply) #3 stromo on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:03

This is very interesting, I wonder how long it will be before the novelty wears off and I'm back on Google

#3.1 Jugalator on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:28

For me it was around 47 seconds.

#4 mattrobs on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:23

What a load of crap.

(4 replies) #5 Jugalator on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:27

This has to be some Silverlight demo rather than a serious attempt at a search engine, I hope.

The Silverlight installer was also a bit odd:

1. It wanted me to restart the browser to finish the install: You shouldn't have to restart the browser for installing a plugin, as little as you have to with Flash or PDF.

2. After restarting it, it then just told me to install Silverlight again. So I did, and restarted again, and then it worked.

Yes, Silverlight is beta, so I hope both these are just "beta sicknesses". MS will be so scoffed at if they're being one of few (haven't seen any, actually) plugins who need to restart the browser, hehe.

#5.1 Slimy on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:31

What browser? On IE7, it downloaded, installed and restarted the browser automatically (without asking) in about 20 seconds.

#5.2 Xerxes on 23 Aug 2007 - 08:09

I had no trouble installing Silverlight on Firefox, not sure why it gave you trouble though

#5.3 Jugalator on 23 Aug 2007 - 09:35

It was on IE 7, and the installer explicitly asked me to restart the browser when it was done to "finish the installation" in a window that popped up when it was done. Heh. I had only that tab open.

#5.4 MioTheGreat on 23 Aug 2007 - 15:33

I'm on IE7 in Vista, and It didn't restart.

(3 replies) #6 Chicane-UK on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:39

Great. Another plugin from Microsoft, that will be tied to the Windows platform.

Thanks - I think i'll pass.

#6.1 Slimy on 23 Aug 2007 - 07:49

Are you talking about Silverlight? It's a cross-platform and cross-browser alternative to Flash. Currently for Windows and Mac OS, and I believe coming to Linux in the near future.
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/syste...quirements.aspx

#6.2 kyro on 23 Aug 2007 - 08:03

Quote - (Slimy said @ #6.1)

Never call it cross platform till there is linux version mmkay.

#6.3 MioTheGreat on 23 Aug 2007 - 15:32

You mean Moonlight?
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

#7 soldiers33 on 23 Aug 2007 - 08:23

That pretty cool, except for the fact that when u click on the image it just loads the results from live search, not tafiti itself.

#8 tony-inpo on 23 Aug 2007 - 09:29

Quite impressive

#9 medion on 23 Aug 2007 - 09:46

Looks cool... I didn't needed to restart anything, it just worked right after the installation..

#10 majortom1981 on 23 Aug 2007 - 12:04

Eh something major will have to go on to drag me away from DOGPILE. Why use one search engine like google when you can use DOGPILE and search all of them?

You can customize how it uses each search engine also. most of the results ccome from google though.

#11 Septimus on 23 Aug 2007 - 19:31

It's meant as a research engine and for that it is good. I like the drop links on the sidebar. Pretty useful.

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