Being on an incubation team, many of the projects I'm attached to are not discussed with the public. Today, however, is a great exception to that rule.

I'd like to introduce you to Tafiti.

Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.

You can try Tafiti following these steps:

·         Go to http://www.tafiti.com

·         Enter a search query

·         Drag interesting results to the shelf on the right.  Each box on the shelf can be used to save a related set of results.  Shelf contents can be saved and shared. 

·         Use the carousel at the bottom left to do different types of searches (image, blog, etc.)

·         Visualize your results using the Tafiti Tree View.

I did a video interview with Channel 10 on this that has just been posted here.

http://www.marcmercuri.com/ct.ashx?id=346119a7-1af5-46ec-9ee2-d8d139af55cd&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.on10.net%2fBlogs%2flarry%2ffirst-look-microsoft-tafiti%2f

I also did a standalone walkthrough you can get to here:

http://www.marcmercuri.com/ct.ashx?id=346119a7-1af5-46ec-9ee2-d8d139af55cd&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.tafiti.com%2fwalkthru.html

More to come as the week progresses....