Microsoft’s Tafiti

Microsoft has just released a new, experimental search service called "Tafiti," which is Swahili for "do research." The service is designed to help you when using the web for research projects. With Tafiti, search queries and sessions can be visualized, stored, and shared. To use Tafiti, you begin by entering your search term in Tafiti’s search box and clicking "go;" you will then arrive at the search results page. Here, the user interface has three general areas: the "search type selection carousel" on the left, the results pane in the middle, and the "shelf" on the right. The search type selection carousel lets you easily alternate between web results, RSS feeds, images, book results, and news results by clicking on the icon for the type of result you want to see. As you change the type of search, the middle pane changes to display your search results. The various types of results are presented in easy-to-read, intuitive formats - web results appear as links along with abstracts of the pages and news results display as if in a real newspaper.

However, it’s the "shelf" on the right side of the page that is the most useful feature. Using the shelf to save your search results sets so that they are accessible from any computer on the internet requires you to sign into Tafiti with your Windows Live ID. On the shelf, you are provided a place to store associated results from any of the search categories. To add items to the shelf, you simply drag and drop the search results to the right side of the page. The results stack up on top of each other, resembling an actual stack of papers or photos. There are actually five "shelves" on the right where you can make "stacks" of your saved search results. These stacks can be labeled for easy reference. To view the contents of a particular stack on the shelf, you just click on the stack and your results appear in what’s called the "stack view," where you can delete items, post the stack to your Windows Live Spaces account, or email the stack to someone else. Another less useful, but fun feature is the "tree view" which displays your results as leaves on tree.

Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and
Live Search and works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari on Windows XP (SP2), Windows Vista , and Mac OS X. To use Tafiti, you must first follow the prompt to install Silverlight.

You can see a walk-through of Tahiti here:

or visit Tahiti.com to try it for yourself.