The Latest In Search

We love and need search. Until I can type feverishly and bring up a 3-dimensional plan of a building to help guide Neo around, I'll be looking for more.

Here are a few new ideas I've run across. Maybe they are not new to you; if you've got more, leave a comment.

• Kartoo This is a flash-based search tool that provides a visual map of the search results. For any term you search for, a set of documents is rendered, and as you hover over a document, an arc is drawn from that document to others that it references. A sidebar on the left allows you to explore the whole set, and you can also view additional sets, each with less relevancy.
• Mooter Mooter also utilizes a map-based search result set. It's not dynamic, so it's faster. The visual maps are limited in detail, making it difficult to decide to take a branch. You have the option to view additional sets or view the whole set of results as you would normally do with traditional search.
• Beagle Beagle is a cool open-source program utilizing Mono. It's a desktop-based search that can cull through your IM conversations, files, pictures, etc, much like Google's Desktop Search ended up doing when it debuted. With powerful desktop search, the need for a hierarchical directory system for your files is lessened; your interactions with the tool bring the results to you, even if all your files are dumped in a flat directory. Google encourages this idea with GMail, where you can't create folders and have to rely on search to get your messages. You also see this in iPhoto and iTunes. Hmm, back to Beagle: Nat has some cool flash movies of it in action.
• In General Yahoo recently debuted a movie-clip search tool, and Google's getting into TV. Library archives are being made accessible also. Princeton has a 3D model search that's cool. It'll also be nice to search songs by clips, or search for forms in images. Michelle often sings a bit of a song to me and I have to try and remember lyrics, then search for those words and eventually get the name of the song.