Microsoft has launched a new search engine to showcase it's, flash competitor, Silverlight animation and video player. tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is a slick application that puts some fun back in searching. The animated interface allows you to quickly flip from results of web searches, news, rss feeds, images, or even searches within books (if the publisher has agreed to allow it). The "shelf" function lets you to drag and drop search results to shelves, stack results, and place labels upon them. There is also an interesting tree view that presents your search results as leaves on a tree, you can spin the tree 360 degrees around it's trunk or prune the branches, a neat interface but maybe not so practical. There are some nice features, I particularly like the collaborative tools, but I'll have to play with it a bit more before I pass judgment on the quality of its search results. Cool just the same.
