Tafiti: Search With Style
Tafiti is a research tool that sits on top of Live.com and was developed with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Tafiti is a download and works on Windows XP , Vista, Mac and several browsers. Called Tafiti, which means “do research” in Swahili, it is intended to help “people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results”. It has no problem doing this.When you first log in to the site, you are greeted with a clean screen. A box tells you that you need to install something called Microsoft Silverlight. Once you have done that, however, the interface changes to a magnificent display of colors…usually. When I visit now, there is a Halo 3 theme.You type your search terms on the card, which then goes off to the left hand side of the screen, and your results are listed in what looks like a drawer from a card catalogue filing cabinet. This all happens in real time, so when a search is done, an earth, a RSS Feed, newspaper, picture, and a book circle around for you to choose. Each time you search, another card is created to track previous searches. The search results show up on the pad and you find items you want to see, you can click them to launch them, or drag them into the tabs on the right-hand side. Those tabs can also be “tagged” so that you can remember what they were by hovering over them. The tabs stick around from search to search, so you can save links there as you work on other searches.
There’s also an interesting visualization tool called the “Tree” view. Clicking on that gives you a different view of your search results. It does not work all the time for me, but perhaps it is because my internet is being temperamental. It is all pretty neat though.
I’ll probably stick with Google as my main search tool, but I really like the Tafiti interface. If you are looking to search, and have some fun, this is the search engine for you. It’s a very creative way to look at searching the internet and helping to make your searching more productive and enjoyable! Check out the video demo!
