Microsoft launches Tafiti search engine, a Siverlight experiment

Microsoft has launched a “new” search engine called “Tafiti” which combines Live Search with Silverlight resulting in a rather unique searching experience.  Call it beautiful, well thought out or just plain practical, Tafiti has something to offer anyone that is searching the Internet for something.

The main page of Tafiti is rather plain, a blue backgroud with a simple search box but the magic happens when you begin searching, your search results will be displayed in any of several formats and you can drag searches off to the “sidebar” to save them.

What I found most intriguing was a circular 3D selection area that let you select between, Web, News, Images, Book or a Feed search and then it flips around in a very stylish fashion.  Basically, Tafiti is a pretty web search, think if it as the “Vista” of search engines.

Tafiti is described like this, “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.“

Of course to make use of Tafiti you will need to install Silverlight and then restart your browser.  It may well be the first search engine from Microsoft that I am impressed with, the front end almost makes putting up with Live’s results worth it.  Keep in mind that Tafiti is in beta and can be sluggish and sometimes the effects are a bit choppy but that will hopefully improve with time.

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