Microsoft’s new search interface, entitled Tafiti, is now in Beta stage. If you want to use it, you will need the Silverlight plug-in. Once you have the plug-in installed, you are in business. Tafiti is a very nicely designed search interface. At present it offers five types of search: news, feeds, books, images and web. It delivers results in a timely fashion and relevance is what one would expect. The display might take a little bit of getting used two. Results are displayed in a two column setup. The left hand column of the results displays the site name, the right column displays info related to your search. It makes the page seem a little less cramped.

Tafiti has some very interesting features that could allow it to take off. Your searches pile up in a “stack” on the left side of the screen, if you have a Windows Live ID, you can save your stacks and access them later. The most interesting feature, however, is the ability drag and drop items from the results page into windows on the right of the page. It makes a handy addition to researchers, but five windows is a little limiting. It would be good to be able to expand it a little. Tafiti is an interesting search interface, it is uncertain whether it will take off, but it is a great showcase for Silverlight. If you have the time and inclination, give it a try.