Spezify - A new search bin ?

And just when you thought they have stopped popping up, here comes another one – Spezify.com . A snazzy search bin devoted to “taking web search further, away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience”.

Looks nice and the results are collaged with bits and pieces of information which infact look like an online newspaper. As mentioned in their “About Spezify “page, the main intent is to present the data in a better (Colorful, brighter) way. Though it seems a bit doubtful (May be I am too used to the Google way). The search results are amassed from different sources like MSN, Yahoo, Amazon, Flickr etc (Google is not a source, wonder what the catch is) and presented as in the picture above. It reminds me of Picassa’s timeline feature which gives you scroll navigation across the surface. I wouldn't call it a search engine since the results are retrieved from other search engines.

The beta of spezify had some user comments which requested for a Zoom in/out option which they have obliged to. Press the spacebar and you will have a broader view of your results if you are already on one particular search.

• One major issue I had is with the way the results were to be selected. With a newspaper reel sort of an interface, I expected a simple click to work. But instead of that, a click on it will zoom in on the result with options presented for you and with the URL mentioned in right hand corner. Click on it and you will be transferred to the needed page.

• Though I believe the settings could be tweaked, I find it an annoyance to have another explorer window popping out when you try to dig into a result. Many users like me expect it to continue on the same page.

• The settings when changed are stored locally on your computer in a cookie. Thumbs down for that.

It’s fun to move the results around on the surface (a pinkish background. Ok. I am colorblind ;-)). The catch here is that search engine requires Flash player by default for the visual effects to work (Correct me if I am wrong).

So the verdict is: You want to show off that you know a different search engine than G, Y, or MSN, you have a good one. But other than the aesthetics, it doesn’t have much to offer the end user.

Options present:

Favourites (Don’t all of them have it now ? )

Tweak Settings (didn’t try it)

You can turn the sources on and off.

Hide types of results (multimedia , text )