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Viewzi: first impressions

  • March 11th, 2008

  • Filed under Reviews

I signed up for the beta of viewzi today, which bills itself as a “highly visual way to search” the internet. After your search results are returned, you can choose between a variety of ways to display those results, each one optimized for a different sort of search, for example shopping, photos or videos. Naturally, the interface is all 2.0y and transition-tastic, but unlike some new search engines (I’m looking at you, Mahalo), the underlying concept is convincing too. Some situations in which viewzi would be dead useful:

  • Getting back to a site that you remember the search term for but not the url – a visual scan of screenshots is really helpful to jog the old memory. Scrolling is implemented really nicely in the Text view, handy for skimming through results quickly.
  • Browsing Amazon via the Book view – dust jacket, reviews, buy now button and similar books are combined into a gorgeous interface which knocks the socks off Amazon’s anaemic site and doesn’t require you to scroll around all over the shop
  • The 4 sources view integrates results (with title, extract and screenshot laid over as you hover) from four search engines which I imagine is very handy when searching for obscure information

These aren’t criticisms as viewzi’s at a fairly early beta stage but here are some features I’d like to see in the final product:

  • As they note on their site, the current speed is significantly below par
  • Options to change from US to international Amazon and ebay stores and integration of other search sources like IMDB
  • Their revenue will come from ads inserted in the views – I don’t mind seeing those, as long as they’re flagged clearly

Overall, viewzi seems really promising, especially for scatter-brained visual thinkers!

Viewzi

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