Microsoft Launches Tafiti.com Experimental Site

[engine]

Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, 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. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.

[tafiti.com...]

Note: You'll need to install Silverlight

[jtara]

No, thanks.

Not one more bug-infested plugin bearing a completely new client-side programming model.

Does anybody seriously expect Silverlight to go anywhere beyond internal corporate websites?

[bwnbwn]

nice search tool I feel as it keeps a stack of the searches you have done for reference.

Good results as well on all the searches I did. I will come back to do more just a quick glance.

[zeus]

hmm was installing this silver stuff, then my irus detecter gave alarm, so i quit.

[beren]

What is Silverlight?

[rarethings55]

This is great.

Drug dealer: Want free money?

Innocent bystander: Sure!

Drug dealer: First you gotta snort this.

Innocent bystander: No thanks!

[zeus]

yes it was Silverlight

[bsterz]

er - I'm not feeling the 2.0 buzz I expected. All this thing needs is an avatar.

The interface borders on campy. I mean, they just took the [rss, images, web] links and made them little icons, and my search was in a ridiculous drawer/scroll thingy - I just don't see what's "new" here

[dakuma]

Regardless of the result its always good to see companies experiment, especially with a user interface. That said, I think the site, visually, leaves alot to be desired. I have Visual Thesaurus, which I love to use, that makes Tafiti look pretty primitive, but the storing/sharing of multiple searches could be useful.

[vincevincevince]

All I get is:

Silverlight requires Windows or Mac OS X

[Habtom]

It still says:

You'll need to install Silverlight to experience Tafiti.com

How many times do I have to install it and restart the browser?

[Habtom]

ok, I gave up.

[Jack_Hughes]

Google have it right...give people the results with a minumum of fuss and time. waiting for those animations every time I do a search would drive me up the wall.

[weeks]

I agree, Jack. What have webmasters learned about search in the last five years? What is the number one thing you would tell a new webmaster? I think it would be--if you're not in the first five results on your topic--and probably the first three--you're not going to get traffic.

Google offers a ton of information to the user. And the user generally ignores it.

Still, Tafti.com is interesting.

And I've now got Silverlight installed on my iMac. I install little helpers like this all of the time--why do I feel funny about this one?

[narsticle]

im totally not impressed by tafiti. It has a cool web 2.0 interface but the search user experience sucks. I think this is just to push their new plugin which i now have installed on my computer.

[travelin cat]

beren,

This is the explanation of Silverlight from the MS web site:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

[narsticle]

i really dislike that they had to use a propitiatory plugin to create this. very microsoft. They should have created a dual version. one version that supported flash or ajax and one that had some additional features if you wanted to download their plugin.

[jwolthuis]

But isn't flash a "proprietary plug-in"? One that cannot run on either my Vista 64-bit browser or my iPhone?

[narsticle]

i guess your right.

[bsterz]

This Silverlite may be a way for MS to benefit from the unbundling of Flash from their browsers..I mean it would have been a really hard sell back when if you had windows you had flash, but now it's just another plugin (from MS) to install.

[iblaine]

Pretty cool tool...doubt I'll use it because there's too much fluff to run quickly but it's nice to see someone thinking outside the box.

[jtara]

waiting for those animations every time

Oh, no, they didn't.... Please tell me they didn't...

... bring Clippy out of retirement!

[BillyS]

They should fix their first search engine before launching another.

[webdoctor]

<Site X> has a cool web 2.0 interface but the [...] user experience sucks

<sigh>

It's not just Tafiti.com that's fallen into that trap.

When will people learn that having "a cool interface" comes a distant second (if that) to providing visitors with what they're looking for - a.k.a. a good "user experience"?

[Couver]

Tried installing it and I got the blue screen of death.