Filters

This visualization, while visually quite stunning, wouldn't be very interesting though, if Microsoft hadn't also added the ability to quickly narrow searches by relevant categories. If you search for 'digital cameras,' for example, you get the option to narrow your search by number of megapixels, optical zoom, or brand. Baseball players can be organized by position, team, or salary, and criminals on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list can be organized by reward, citizenship, or the crime they are wanted for.

Overall, these visual elements can really make some searches a lot easier, especially if you are starting out with a broad category and you are trying to narrow your search down (try 'yoga poses,' for example).

As Stefan Weitz, Microsoft's Director of Bing, told us last month, for some queries, visual results are simply much easier to scan for users than simple lists of texts. At the end of your work with the visual search interface, however, you are still taken back to a regular Bing search.

Silverlight Only

Microsoft decided to use Silverlight as the one and only way to access the visual search feature. At this point, Weitz argued when we asked him about this choice, Silverlight is already widely installed on millions of computers and Microsoft decided that the experience will not degrade gracefully if you don't have Silverlight installed.

Useful or Just a Gimmick?

While Visual Search might look like a gimmick at first (and it definitely is an interesting visual feature), it actually turns out to be a very usual feature for most of the searches that currently support it. The range of searches that allow you to visualize the results is still somewhat limited, though Microsoft will surely add on to this list over time. If anything, this is yet another feature in Bing that Google doesn't offer yet. As Bing tries to position itself as a 'decision engine' and not just as a search engine, this is also another feature that will help Microsoft to make this distinction. Instead of a list of links, Bing can now offer a set of faster and more visually pleasing search results

Topics

Here is a list of current topics that will pop up Visual Search as an option:

• 100 heroes and villains
• Billboard's past albums
• Billboard's past songs
• Film legends
• Greatest movies
• Movies in theaters
• Popular books
• Popular celebrities
• Popular DVDs
• Popular TV shows
• Pulitzer winning fiction
• Top albums
• Top songs
• Famous People
• FBI's most wanted
• Popular celebrities
• US politicians
• US presidents
• US vice presidents
• World leaders

Reference

• Dog breeds
• Periodic table
• Travel destinations
• US politicians
• US presidents
• US states
• US vice presidents
• World leaders
• Yoga poses

Shopping

• Cell phones
• Digital cameras
• Handbags
• HDTVs
• New cars
• Popular books
• Popular DVDs
• Portable GPS
• Pulitzer winning fiction
• Top albums
• Top iPhone apps

Sports

• MLB players
• MLB teams
• NASCAR drivers
• NBA players
• NBA teams
• NFL players
• NFL teams
• NHL players
• NHL teams
• UFC fighters

Then, depending on your computer (Mac or PC), you can either download the Windows-only desktop client or head over to the online service at quanp.net. Unfortunately, non-Windows users using the online service miss out on the sexiest thing about this new service: the 3D file browser.

For Windows Users

In the Windows desktop client, you browse through your files using its visually stunning interface. Although pretty, visual browsing isn't always the most efficient way to locate a particular file, so quanp's software also lets you search by keyword, tag, date, and more. The client even includes a basic reader for Microsoft Office files so you can see the content without having to launch the office software.

For Mac Users

Non-Windows users can use the online site to browse through files, but there's nothing all that exciting about this part of the service. It doesn't even offer an web version of the 3D interface. However, you can view files and their metadata, share them with others, plus upload or download files using buttons provided on the site.

Sexy, But Useful?

For the most part, a lot of what makes quanp fun to use is its visual eye candy. However, for users of the free Windows Live service, there may be some hesitation in switching. Although lacking a drag-and-drop widget of its own, Windows Live users can upload both photos and videos to online services using Photo Gallery software - and not just to the online service provided by Windows Live, but to flickr, Facebook, and YouTube as well (the last two via plugins). They can also tag files, identify faces, edit photos, and browse through files - just not in glorious 3D.

Of course there are plenty of other online storage services out there, but Windows Live is the most apt comparison since it, like quanp, is a combination of desktop software and an online component - a "software + services" arrangement. Most other online storage services either don't offer desktop tools at all or don't offer tools that also function as a way to elegantly browse and edit your files.

To determine if quanp is the better choice for you, think about whether you need to upload more than just photos or videos - if so, then quanp will work (although visual search of docs isn't quite as fun). Also of note, quanp offers 10 GB to Windows Live's 25 GB. However, the company plans to offer graded pricing in the future for additional storage, but no official decision has yet been made on exactly what that will be.

Of course, for some early adopters, "sexy" beats "practical" any day. If that describes you, then you should sign up for the quanp beta here. (But sorry world - the beta is U.S.-only!)

So, what's different? As of today, Cooliris will no longer launch into a full-screen 3D browser when activated. Instead, Cooliris will launch into a separate browser tab. This change was heavily requested by Cooliris users, a multi-tasking bunch of folks who wanted to be able to quickly switch back and forth between Cooliris's 3D web and all the other open tabs and applications running on their computers.

The Benefits of Cooliris in a Tab

However, as much as we loved soaring around through the visually stunning Cooliris application, one of its main drawbacks was the way it took over the desktop's screen upon launch. This sometimes even became an annoyance, like, for example, when an accidental click on the Cooliris button in Flickr had us sucked into the app's full screen mode when we really meant to go to the photo page.

Now all that's going to change because the new default setting is for Cooliris to launch in a new tab. Since all the supported browsers offer tabbed browsing, there was no issue in making this sort of adjustment. (Cooliris supports Safari, IE, and Firefox but tells us they're working on supporting more browsers in the future.) However, full screen mode is still possible, if that's your preference, via a button at the bottom of the screen.

Since Cooliris now launches in a tab, it's given a specific and unique URL. This, in turn, delivers more features to the application. Because it's just a URL, it can now be registered in your browser's history, can be saved as a browser bookmark, and can be shared with friends via social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. Of course, anyone clicking on the URL will need Cooliris installed to see what you're sharing, but those that don't will be delivered to a landing page informing them of this.

A Couple of Other Changes

Although the change in Cooliris's launch behavior is the biggest news coming out of this update, there are a couple of other features worth noting as well. To begin, Cooliris now includes metadata for Flickr photos, just like how they had added metadata for YouTube videos, Facebook photos, and Amazon products during their last update. After Flickr, the team plans to keep adding in metadata for all their supported services over the course of future releases.

The metadata isn't just text information, either. A lot of it is hyperlinked. For instance, in the Flickr metadata, you can click on a username or date to be immediately taken to all the photos from that user or time frame. Also new today is a right-side column that lets you browse all the photosets from that user.

If you already have Cooliris installed, just update your extension. New users can download Cooliris from here. This update currently works on Firefox and IE only. A Safari version is coming soon.

Cooliris version 1.11: The 3D Wall in your browser tab from Cooliris on Vimeo.

To use PicClick, simply choose either the Amazon or eBay tab, enter a basic search term or drill down using pre-selected topics, and add price information if you like. Then, hit search and - voila - your browser is suddenly filled with a series of thumbnails, giving you a visual representation of the available products matching your criteria.

Aside from being visually compelling, PicClick is fast. It manages to return relevant results exceedingly quickly. Plus, flying through hundreds of entries seems a great deal easier without having extemporaneous information cluttering the page.

Clicking on any of the thumbnails takes you directly to the product page on the respective site. Thumbnails too small? There's a slider that dynamically changes the size of the images.

According to StartupSD, the service is the latest brainchild of the prolific Ryan Sit, the developer who created FavThumbs - a similar visual browser for delicious bookmarks, Favtape - which ReadWriteWeb's Frederic Lardinois called "Muxtape on steroids," and Swurl - which RWW's Marshall Kirkpatrick described as "your lifestream made beautiful."

To start - literally - looking for what you're looking for on Amazon and eBay, visit PicClick.

There are tons of sites on the web that you want to tag and share with others, but there are also plenty that don't need to be out there for everyone to see. You don't need to socially share the link to your blog's administration page, for example, or the link to your local news and weather site. You certainly don't need to share the links to that weird health ailment you've been googling, either. Or perhaps you want to keep private the research you've been doing for an upcoming article on your blog.

Of course, you could just bookmark these pages using a web 2.0 service and set them to "private," but there's something to be said for having the links close at hand, available in only a couple of clicks from your browser's menu.

The only problem with using a browser's bookmark menu - the problem that the Web 2.0 bookmarking services meant to solve - is that when you have so many links saved, it becomes difficult to find them again. You even start to forget what you have in there. With delicious, Ma.gnolia, etc., this problem was dealt with by tagging favorites with keywords to make them more easily searchable.

Visual Search For Personal Bookmarks

While tagging may work for some, the new service from Tidy Favorites thinks they have a better way - visual search.

We've noticed visual search is a space that's heating up. There are iPhone apps and visual search engines galore. Even Amazon got in the mix with their new "window shopping" storefront.

Now you can take advantage of the power of visual search to browse through your own bookmarks, too. (Yes, we know Ma.gnolia uses thumbnails, but it's not quite the same.)

How Tidy Favorites Works

Tidy Favorites installs like desktop software, but functions as a browser plugin. If anything, it's more like Evernote than it is like a Web 2.0 bookmarking service. 

What makes Tidy Favorites easy to use is its simplicity. To bookmark a page, all you need to do is click the "Plus" button it adds to your browser toolbar. Then, to interact and organize your favorites, you just click the "Star" button.

The Tidy Favorites organizer will appear, pre-loaded with a tab that displays your "Top Links." These are the sites you visit a lot, similar to what both Opera and Google Chrome display when you open a new tab.

Uncategorized bookmarks reside in the Tidy Favorites sidebar, ready to be orgnaized. At the bottom of the dashboard, you can right-click to add a new tab. Then you simply drag and drop links from your sidebar onto that tab's page. The tabs at the bottom are very intuitive to use if, especially if you're familiar with Excel spreadsheets. Within each tab, you can also right-click to add folders to further categorize your favorites.

Other Nifty Features

Besides just organizing bookmarks, Tidy Favorites has a few extra features that make it stand out. One such feature is a cropping tool that lets you slice out a piece of a web page and save that as the visual thumbnail for the site. For example, if you regularly visit a page to see your local forecast, you could slice out the part that just shows the weather, instead of creating a thumbnail of the entire page.

Using this option, you could make a dashboard of at-a-glance information within one of Tidy Favorites' tabs. When you think of all the different ways you could use this tool, you'll realize that this feature could actually be an improvement on using dashboard-like homepages where data comes from pre-designed widgets and RSS feeds.

Tidy Favorites is also portable, so if you want to take your links to go, you can add them to a USB drive.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

One feature of the software that really needs to work well is the built-in search box. Using the search function, you should be able to easily search your bookmarks by entering in a keyword or search term, then click "Google," "Images," or "Wiki" (Wikipedia).  When using the Google option, it will by default search your favorites like a Google Custom Search Engine would. But upon testing this, it wasn't finding some links saved even though I used good keywords. It seemed to be returning Google search results, but it was supposed to be searching the bookmarks only. Obviously, this is a critical feature that still needs some work.

Another big problem is that, unfortunately, this software is currently Windows-only. The page that it displays is saved on your computer itself, as its URL starts with your local IP (127.0.0.1). Why this can't be ported over to Mac or Linux is unknown, but we hope they are working on it.

We'll keep our eye on Tidy Favorites for now. It's still rather new, so we'll let them iron out some of the kinks we saw. They still have minor usability tweaks to make like deleting thumbnails from the sidebar after they're dropped in a tab. We think the bookmarks should automatically arrange themselves on the page, too. If they can fix these problems, we could definitely see this as being a great tool for organizing sites, but it's clear they're not quite there yet. So until then, it's back to Evernote for us.

On Windowshop.com, you can either use your mouse or the arrow keys (the keyboard works better) to scroll through a wall of Amazon.com content which includes both best-sellers and new releases in Books, Music, Video, and Games categories. After you zoom in on an item, a preview will play. For an album, that preview is just a snippet of a song; for an audiobook, it's a snippet of the narrator reading the content; for video content like movies, TV shows, and games, you'll see a video clip displayed instead.

The content is sorted into different scrollable columns with column labels at the top describing the items below. There are columns with both the best-sellers and new items for each category, but there are also Editor's Picks and "Best-Selling of All Time" categories, too. As new content is added to the site every Tuesday, the older content is moved to the right, which keeps the Windowshop.com product list in chronological order.

Cooliris Should Be Flattered

The Windowshop site is so much like a Cooliris-enabled web page, that it had us scanning for a "powered by Cooliris" logo somewhere on the site. The scrolling, zoomable wall of content is very similar to what the Cooliris plugin provides. It seems the entire site has been inspired by the technology if it doesn't, in fact, actually use it to power the virtual "windowshopping" itself.

It's interesting that this site was created only a few months after Amazon.com became Cooliris-enabled themselves, with their own Amazon category underneath the Discover/Shopping feature within the Cooliris browser. There, you can scroll through several other categories of content like Home & Garden, Baby, Electronics, the Kindle Store, and more. You can also sort the content displayed by price, popularity, or relevance. The Cooliris wall also has a nifty 3D effect when scrolled, where the Windowshop.com wall stays very much 2D.

Still, the Winodwshop site is another good alternative to visually browsing the best from Amazon.com, even if it is just a tribute to Cooliris's technology. You know what they say about imitation...

We've seen more of these types of visual browsing technologies pop-up this year, from ManagedQ's semantic Google-based search to Photo Stream's visual newsroom and, more recently, to new search engines like Viewzi and SearchMe. We wonder: will 2008 be remembered as the year visual search took off?

Cooliris has always been one of our favorite web browser plugins as it re-imagines the entire experience of browsing through the web. Designed with surfing media in mind, the browser plugin lets you surf through a 3D wall of content and then zoom in and out on the images and videos found. The plugin doesn't work on all web sites yet, but several big names are already supported like Flickr, YouTube, Kodack, Amazon, Photobucket, Picasa, DeviantArt, Smugmug, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Google Images, and more. You can also Cooliris-enable your own web site with only a bit of code.

The iPhone App

Now, with the Cooliris iPhone application (iTunes link), the 3D media surfing experience has been delivered to the mobile web, too. For those familiar with the Cooliris browser plugin, the iPhone experience will be very familiar. The only difference is that you no longer need to use a mouse to move through the wall of media - you only need your finger.

Search

You're able to do Google searches with the iPhone app, so, if nothing more, Cooliris offers a unique way to to visually search the web using a Google-powered search engine. However, the Cooliris app also allows for searching other sites, too, including Flickr, Yahoo, SmugMug, and DeviantArt.

Discover

With the Discover feature, the app uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to detect your location in order to deliver personalized feeds for your locale. For example, here in the U.S., one of the categories available is for the U.S. Elections. Other countries will have their own local news featured here instead. As you read through the news in the Cooliris app, you can easily pull up a related story by "clicking" on the associated metadata the app displays. This lets you visit related web content without having to leave the Cooliris app to view the parent web site back in Safari. In other words, in addition to being a visual search engine, Cooliris is an alternative browser too.

You Have To Try This!

If before you felt that the Cooliris web browser plugin was cool, but wondered if it was all that useful, you'll definitely want to see it in use on the iPhone now and think again. The marriage of the 3D technology and the mobile web is the perfect combination. Cooliris seems as if it was designed just for the touchscreen iPhone.

This app represents what is only the first release for Cooliris on the iPhone. Later on, the app will include more features ported over from the web client as well as new features designed specifically for the iPhone. The company won't hint what those may be, but we're definitely going to stay tuned.

Here's a look at some of the best visual views that Viewzi offers...

Web Screenshot View

The Web Screenshot view allows users to view screenshots of the pages of search results returned by Yahoo only. Up to 20 results are loaded at a time for maximum performance. However, once you get to the end of the set, 20 more are immediately loaded.

Basic Photo View

If you're a fan of Flickr, the Basic Photo view is perfect for you. This view shows images from popular image sharing sites Flickr and Riya. While the default setting is to use both sites and display the search results in a small size, users have the option of enlarging the search results and also removing images from either Flickr or Riya.

Video x3 View

If you're looking for video results, Viewzi allows you to view results from Youtube, Blinkx, and Veoh. Tags from videos are listed nicely above the video results Clicking on a tag allows users to dim videos they don't wish to be included in the search results.

Simple Text View

The Simple Text view provides combined search results from Google and Yahoo search engines in typical search engine fashion, but with a small twist. For one, a small screenshot is provided to the left of each result. To enlarge the screenshot, simple hover your mouse over the image for a better view. Another feature that's displayed is the site's Compete.com ranking.

4 Source View

Get visual search results from all 4 of the top search engines with the 4 Source view. You can view up to 15 search results from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and MSN in a 5 x 3 area. Results are color coded and lettered with its corresponding search engine. Hovering over any of the provided screenshots gives users an enlarged image and a brief synopsis of the source.

Other great views include Amazon Book view, Everyday Shopping view, The Weather view, Celebrity Photo view, and a MP3 Search view.

Visual Searching In Style

With the variety of views at users disposal, there is something for everyone here. While we wouldn't crown it the next "Google" , it could provide a better user experience for casual web searching. What could make Viewzi even better is an optional way for users to create their own "4 Sources" view by providing a way to search their favorite news sources in style. All in all, Viewzi seems to be a solid visual search engine.

Visualize Social Networks

Last.Forward: Thanks to Last.fm's new widget gallery, you can now explore a wide selection of extras to extend your Last.fm experience. The gallery hosts widgets for your desktop, for the web, for social networks, and much more. One of the better tools in the gallery, last.forward, is open source software that lets you map out any last.fm user and their connections. The web site for the software appears to be in German, but the "Download" button still works. And once it was downloaded and installed, I had no trouble using it myself.

Last Forward

Friends Sociomap: Friends Sociomap is another Last.fm tools that generates a map of the music compatibility between you and your Last.fm friends.

Fidg't: Fidg't is a desktop application that gives you a way to view your networks tagging habits. You can see what kind of music your network is into, or what kind of pictures they are taking. The Fidg't Visualizer allows you to play around with your network. To use Fidg't, you interface with the Visualizer through Flickr and LastFM tags, using any tag to create what they call a "Magnet." Once a Tag Magnet is created, members of the network will gravitate towards it if they have photos or music with that same Tag. You can also search through the network for certain users, and see their recent photos and music. The Fidg't interface is beautiful, too.

Fidg't

The Digg Tools:

Digg.com has some of the best web-based visualization tools on the net, so they're a must for any visualization list.

• Pics: Digg Pics is the latest tool that tracks the activity of images on the site with images that slide in from the left as people submit them and digg them.
• Arc: Digg Arc displays stories, topics, and containers wrapped around a sphere. The more diggs, the thicker the arcs.
• BigSpy: Digg BigSpy places stories at the top of the screen as they are dugg. Bigger stories have more diggs.
• Stack: Digg Stack shows diggs in real time, with diggs falling from the top of the screen. As stories get more diggs, they're shown in brighter colors.
• Swarm: Digg Swarm draws circles for stories as they're dugg. Diggers swarm around stories which makes them grow and get brighter.

YouTube:

You can discover related videos using YouTube's visualizations. To use this feature, go to a YouTube video, click on the full-screen button, and then click on the small button that shows a network. You'll see a lot of video balloons appear and the configuration will change when you hover over a button.

Visualize Music

• Liveplasma and Musicovery let you discover new music.
• Tuneglue music map is a "relationship explorer," similar to LivePlasma. Using data from Amazon and Last.fm, Tuneglue explores relationships between musical artists.
• Moody lets you tag your music collection with colors. They also have a color-coded web player. (our coverage)
• The Echo Nest is an audio analysis tool which takes an mp3 file, breaks it up into little segments, and gives pitch, loudness, and high-level timbral descriptions of each one of those segments. The program maps a subset of this audio data onto a visual scale and creates video playback of the song. (more)
• An interactive harmony model of music which geometrically describes relationships in harmony. The model can be a visualization tool for songwriters or students of music.
• Musiclens gives music recommendations and presents your current mood and musical taste as a diagram.
• Shape Of Song: What does music look like?
• Musicmap: connections are represented as connected lines; they create a web.

Musicovery

Last.fm music visual tools:

• Last Graph: Create artist wave graphs from your musical history in PDF and SVG format.
• Extra Stats: Colorful Stats and tag clouds.
  

Visualize the Internet

• Opte is a project that lets you graphically map the internet. The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and esthetics/art.





• Akamai Technologies, who deliver 15-20% of all web traffic offered up some interesting tools last year for viewing their traffic data. (Our coverage) From their flagship app, the Real-time Web Monitor, which shows countries with the most traffic to the Network Performance Comparison app, Akami's tools are an interesting way to see the web in real time. In all, they offer 6 Flash-based apps to the public.
• Other internet traffic visualizations include the Internet Health Report and the Internet Traffic Report.
• MantaRay displays the geographical placement of MBONE infrastructure (Multi-cast backbone) of the internet. Otter displays topological views of the (same) multicast infrastructure.
• Packet Garden is an app that watches your Internet traffic and builds a private world that you can later explore.
• Mapnet is a Java applet to visualize the topologies of backbones of major U.S. Internet Service Providers.
• Websites as graphs. An HTML DOM Visualizer Applet, which displays sites as graphs depending on the amount of links, tables, div tags, images, forms and other tags.

Packet Garden

Amazon

• LivePlasma: music discovery (see also music section of this list)
• Flowser is another flash-based Amazon visualization for search.
• BrowseGoods is a visualization that lets you zoom and pan Amazon's catalog of products.
• Tuneglue music map is a "relationship explorer," similar to LivePlasma. Using data from Amazon and Last.fm, Tuneglue explores relationships between musical artists. (see also music section of this list)
• Coverpop is more of an art project that lets you browse Amazon via a collage.
• Amaztype, a typographic book search, collects the information from Amazon and presents it in the form of keyword you’ve provided. To get more information about a given book, simply click on it.

Flickr

• Taglines lets you to visualize Flickr tags over time
• Flickrvision: view real-time flickr photos on a map.
• Flickrtime is a tool that uses Flickr API to present the uploaded images in real-time. The images form the clock which shows the current time.

Some details on these: see "Alternative ways to browse Amazon" (our coverage)

Miscellaneous

• Visual Thesaurus: The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words.
• Twittervision: view real-time tweets on a map.
• 17 More Ways to Visualize Twitter
• All the ways to visual del.icio.us collected here.
• Three Views shows three views of the earth, in which each country is represented by a circle that shows the amount of money spent on the military (size of circle) and what fraction of the country’s earnings that uses (color).
• We Feel Fine shows human feelings calculated from a large number of weblogs.
• Interactive History Timeline presents the history of Great Britain, divided into interactive data blocks.
• Winning Lotto Numbers shows the frequency of appearance of every number from one year to the next one.
• Language Poster - the history of programming languages

Sites Dedicated to Visualization

• IBM's Many Eyes (our coverage) is a shared visualization and discovery service offering all kinds of visualizations you can explore or create.
• Informationarchitects.jp presents the 200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective in a mindmap.
• VisualComplexity.com is an online collection of visualizations (our coverage)
• Infosthetics discusses the aesthetics of data visualization
• Blogger Anonymous Professor is into visualization, offering visualizations like the 3D visualization/tour of classical music/composers, Visualization of the StumbleUpon network, the value of a Digg and more.
• Zip Codes visualized

Search

Heatmaps:

Heatmaps site CrazyEgg applies heatmaps to tracking what visitors do on a user's website. Their software captures user clicks on each page and then presents a summary in the form of a heatmap. Other heatmap sites include Feng-GUI and FuseStats. Summize applies heatmaps to shopping via their search engine(our coverage here, here and here).

Visualizing the Power Struggle in Wikipedia displays the most popular articles and the most frequent search queries in the heatmap.

Visual Search Engines:

• Riya's Like.com: first true visual search engine does visual search for shopping.
• Searchme: upcoming visual search for the web
• Xcavator: A photo search engine which utilizes visual clues that you provide to identify and extract similar pictures from large groups of digital images.
• ManagedQ: A visual search experiment with some built-in semantics. (our coverage)
• oSkope: Visual search engine for finding products that searches Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo!Image Search and YouTube.
• Quintura: visual search engine that uses clouds, tags, and highlighting.
• Tafiti: Microsoft's experimental visual search engine running on Silverlight.
• Retrievr is an experimental service which lets you search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch.
• Mooter: Visual search engine that organizes results In clusters.
• KartOO: visual web searc.
• SearchCrystal is a search visualization tool that let you compare, remix and share results from sources on the web, whether sites, images, videos, blogs, news engines or RSS feeds. (see also KoolTorch)
• Spacetime: search Google, YouTube, RSS, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr and images all in one 3D space.
• grokker: web search or enterprise search offering map views of data.
• Burst Labs suggests similar or connected items to your search queries in a bubble
• UBrowser renders interactive web pages onto geometry using OpenGL and an embedded instance of Gecko
• walk2web - enter a URL, then visually browse web sites linked from it
• TouchGraph's Amazon Browser, Google Browser, and LiveJournal Browser

Touchgraph

News and RSS

• Voyage is an RSS-feader which displays the latest news in the “gravity area”. News can be zoomed in and out. The navigation is possible with a timeline
• Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.
• Universe DayLife displays events, connections and news as circles which gravitate around the topic they are related to.

Data

• Swivel create pie charts, diagrams and histograms.
• Xtimeline and Circavie let you create your own timelines
• The prefuse visualization toolkit - thebeta-version of a Java-based toolkit for programming of applications with integrated data visualization methods
• Dataesthetics Eric Blue on unusual Data Visualization methods.
• Smashing Magazine's Diagram tool list
• America by the Numbers (Time.com)

Swivel

some sources - via, via

If that was all ManagedQ did, it would just be another visual search engine, not offering much more than a similar service like that of RedZee, except that its visual previews are real-time.

However, ManagedQ has a unique feature in its "Executive Summary" bar to the left of the results. This is where you'll find the important ideas in your search grouped by people, places and things. If you're the first person to search a particular keyword, these take a little time to load, but summaries for repeat queries are instantaneous. As you mouse over an idea in the Executive Summary, it finds each occurrence in that term in search results and highlights the full matches in yellow and the partial matches in light yellow.

You can also search for a particular term in your search results, even if it's not listed as one of the terms in the Executive Summary. You simply begin typing in the search box and the Instant Find feature begins matching with every keystroke. In this way, the real-time feedback very much resembles the "Ctrl" + "F" functionality you have your own web browser today.

When you see a result that looks promising, you can click on it and you'll see the page as they are calling a "Managed Result." A Managed Result just renders the important info on the page, mainly text, with all the slow code trimmed out, so exploring results is fast. Of course, you can still visit the web site itself by clicking the web site's title.

The service also supports regular expressions, something that may be too geeky for most consumers, but an interesting and useful add-on for those who know what they're doing.

With ManagedQ, the result is more than that of just a visual search experience. Instead, this fast, flexible service hones in on what you're looking for with ease. With the addition of the People, Places, and Things in the Executive Summary and by making the search results themselves immediately searchable, it's as if it already knew what you were hoping to find.