Last Thursday, Nitin wrote an article about the role of the Algorithm in Search. Nitin used the title, “Beauty or Brains?” and I’m here to tell you, these User Interfaces are bea-u-ti-ful!

This Thursday, I’m going to attempt to persuade you that the Interface is the key.

The following week, Kaila Colbin will seek to find the Truth between the two poles.

As a precursor, this Monday’s Vertical is 10 different ways to visualize search results.

Note: Most of these results move, are 3-D, shift and change shape, reorient themselves, and zoom in and out in many different ways. You will not be able to appreciate any of that just by looking at the images here. My goal is to pique your interest just enough to get you to -
click on the links and explore these yourself!

First off, we have Text Results Google Style.


Secondly, Image Results Google Style.


And also the regular ebay results.


First up to bat is the The KartOO map.


Next, the QuinturaTag Cloud. KartOO and Quintura are Discovery engines. In this image, you may not have any idea what the “ritual” is, so you just move your mouse and click on that word. The whole cloud will then re-orient itself.


Here are KoolTorch’s ebay results. 50 here, by category and time remaining, with thumbnail images of each one as you roll your mouse over them. They can show up to 100 “marbles.” Of course you can click through to an auction, like I did for this cool flask. You can also click on the center of any circle to “drill down” to the underlying sub-categories.


“Moulin Rouge” was a famous Absinthe bar in France, and a movie. Here LivePLasma, a recommendation engine, is showing you other movies that you might like. The closer to Moulin Rouge (in the center of the circle), the more similar it is to Moulin Rouge.


Here is Tagnautica showing you Absinthe images from flickr. The circles are alphabetical, they spin around, changing size all the while. This one is a lot of fun. Even though it does not show web image results, it’s not a stretch to see that it could.


Notice how thefind.com let me select a dollar range of $460 – $672. Pretty handy if you’re shopping for a present on a budget! When you go there, you’ll “find” that thefind.com has many clever features if you’re actually shopping around to buy something. Not shown is the ability to specify what color you are looking for.


Here searchCrystal is showing the first 10 results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, and flickr all at once. searchCrystal is so sophisticated, you could spend an hour just exploring this site.


oSkope visual search is the new kid in town. Select ebay or Amazon, etc., and then choose from five different types of graphs.


SpaceTime does require a download which will probably stop most of you. But boy, will you be missing out! These 3-D ebay results can effortlessly move forward and back in a perpetual regression, and allow you to click into an auction or delete bad ones and much more. It would be a shame to miss this one. (Note my flask in front.)


It’s hard to see here, but Grokker has its own unique controls. Instead of price, it lets you use a slider to determine the exact date range of the results.


As you can see, I wasn’t just joking. I won the flask!

Maybe it was the sales pitch that did it:

Absinthe Original Flask: My divorce is final and I’m selling off my ex’s crap. Here we have a round flask from Absinthe Original, which I believe is a company out of what was once Yugoslavia. It’s about five inches across and has a glass window in the front. Don’t ask for any more details; I don’t have them and I’m not asking my ex-husband.

Editor’s note: Quintura is a sponsor of AltSearchEngines.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 12:18 am and is filed under Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.