Viewzi: Beautiful Search
Written on May 9, 2008 – 12:45 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
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Viewzi is a new player in the search engine world. They launched in closed beta at the end of april and have distributed about 50,000 invites so far. Fighting Google just on strength is virtually impossible. So, as most self appointed ‘Google Killers’ Viewzi focuses on displaying their search results more intelligently. First they try to guess what kind of information you are looking for. Is is a term, an image, a person or maybe audio of video content. Then they get a bunch of results from other specialized search engines like Google but also Flickr and Amazon.
Once they have gotten these results they present them in a ‘View’ that is optimized for the kind of content you are looking for. You can easily switch between different ‘Views’ and websites and images are previewed and preloaded so you don’t have to go back and forth between sites trying to find out which result is the right one.
I was skeptical when I looked at their front page. It just looked too black, image rich and bloated. But I decided to check out their video and than made all the difference. The implementation of what they call ‘Views’ is very well done and the idea of browsing through filtered content in their result pages actually sounds cool.
Google, and most other websites, aim to make the search experience as efficient as possible. You search, get results and click away to a destination site somewhere off the Google domain. Viewzi attempts to make the Search experience more than that. If they manage to deliver you will stick around browsing content on their site similar to how you browse through music in iTunes. browsing through beautiful results could be an joyful experience instead of a waste of time.
UPDATE: I have asked for few invitations. If you want one leave a comment and I will send you
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12 Responses to “Viewzi: Beautiful Search”
By Bob Boynton on May 9, 2008 | Reply
The service has a number of views — ways to look at the results of the search. If you are looking for something that will yield results as web pages there is a 4 sources view that is very nice. It starts with 6 small images of pages. You can move the mouse over one and that pops a somewhat larger view of the page and information about the page. If it is something you want to look at you can click and you get the full page. This is only one of a number of views.
The point is that this is quite a novel organization for presenting research results. It is very different from the standard list, and it is well worth giving a try.
It may be particularly focussed on internet stuff. When I searched for twine it came up with the semantic network first. Only 6 or 10 down the list did I get string and music group.
By adam on May 9, 2008 | Reply
I am looking forward to get invitation from Viewzi (I quoted your article and link to it). It seems a kind of a (ManagedQ+sound+video+…+design)squared
p.s.
Video looks so good, that Google Lab could propose…, even before their official launch):
By Jochem on May 9, 2008 | Reply
Sounds like an interesting approach to search Boris, if you have an invitation available… I would love to try it out.
By adam on May 9, 2008 | Reply
Boris, I’ve got an invitation from Viewzi. That was truly an amazing experience, even on my old machine! Total overview about desired key word. It takes some time to get used, because there are so many possibilities.
@Jochem: just use the link of this web page - article
By Jochem on May 9, 2008 | Reply
@adam: thanks, that worked indeed. Trying it out just now…
By Jasper on May 9, 2008 | Reply
Video looks great! If there are any invitations left, I would like to receive one.
By adam on May 9, 2008 | Reply
@Jasper: just apply on the Viewzi web site and quote the link of this page: http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/09/viewzi-search-20/
By tocky on May 10, 2008 | Reply
Ping! interesting approach. I want to try it.
By Jeff on May 11, 2008 | Reply
This looks like a kick ass service. I’d like an invitation if you have an left
By Jesus Franco on May 11, 2008 | Reply
Viewzi is awesome
By Jack on May 11, 2008 | Reply
I’d like an invite too, if poss. please Boris.
By Ezra on May 12, 2008 | Reply
For visually oriented people, this service looks like it could be fantastic.
If you have any other invites - I would love one too please. :)