Viewzi is a search engine company based in Dallas, Texas that is developing a highly visual experience that tailors the way users look at information based on what they are looking for. The search engine lightens the data overload by filtering and grouping results into several distinct interfaces. Users get over 16 “views” for their search including MP3 view (with a list of streaming audio you can play), album view (cover art and related musicians), plus specialized lenses for images, news, and more.

How It Works

A project that is said to have been in the works for roughly two years, Viewzi, is a visual search utility – or “platform,” as its engineers prefer to call it – transferred to beta stage in April, 2008. Instead of providing a single list of results in a set form for search requests, as Google does, Viewzi provides different “views” that are tailored to the request being made. The service loads in browsers such as Firefox, Safari, and IE 7 and requires Flash 9.

The Views

• 3D Photo Cloud View: German design firm WHITEvoid built this intuitive visual 3D image browser for Viewzi with Papervision3D. In this view the user will search for a word and click on 3D Photo Cloud View to see it in action. The user can then add as many words as they like to their search by clicking where they want to place them. Data Sources: Flickr, Google, and Riya.
• 4 Source View: This view gives you a visual grid of your search results from the four major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Microsoft), with the pages “stacked” when they duplicate. It’s an easy way to see search results from multiple search engines, and the extra datapoint–the results that the multiple engines see as important–is useful. Data Sources: Ask, Google, Microsoft Live Search, and Yahoo!
• Album View: Data Sources: Amazon, iTunes, and Last. FM.
• Amazon Book View: Data Source: Amazon.
• Basic Photo View: This view shows images from popular image sharing sites Flickr, SmugMug, and Riya. While the default setting is to use two sites and display the search results in a small size, users have the option of enlarging the search results and also removing images from either Flickr, SmugMug or Riya. : Data Sources: Flickr, Riya, and SmugMug.
• Blog Search View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Bloglines, IceRocket, MyBlogLog, and Technorati.
• Celebrity Gossip View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: E!, Just Jared, Perez Hilton, TMZ, Us, and Yahoo! OMG.
• Celebrity Photo View: Keep up with the paparazzi. This view pulls from a handful of the top trafficked celebrity blogs. The Celebrity Photo View is a casual and fun way to see all the latest celebrity photos in a light-box style layout.Data Sources: Google images and several celebrity blog sites.
• Digital Camera View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Amazon, DPReview, Flickr, and the-digital-picture.
• Everyday Shopping View: Data Sources: Amazon, eBay, Target, and Wal-Mart.
• Facebook Events View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Facebook, Meetup, and Upcoming.
• Gadget View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Amazon, Flickr, Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia.
• Movie View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Amazon, Amazon Unbox, Google, Metacritic, Netflix, and Yahoo!
• MP3 Search ViewData Sources: Digital Audio Search, MP3 Realm, and SeeqPod.
• PowerUser View: not yet released, in development. Data Sources: Google.
• Recipe View: Data Sources: epicurious, SimplyRecipes, 101 Cookbooks, and myrecipes.
• Reuters News View: Released with initial site. Currently unavailable due to technical issues. Data Source: Reuters.
• Simple Text View: The Simple Text view provides combined search results from Google and Yahoo search engines in typical search engine fashion, but with a small twist. For one, a small screenshot is provided to the left of each result. To enlarge the screenshot, simple hover your mouse over the image for a better view. Another feature that’s displayed is the site’s Compete.com ranking. Data Sources: Alexa, Google, and Yahoo!
• Site Information View: This view grabs stats from Google, Alexa, Delicious, Twitter and others. There is a little sidebar on the right that shows tweet chatter in real time. For Instance one glance at this page told could tell a user that the site they are looking for was down an hour ago, but it’s back up now. Data Sources: Alexa, Delicious, and Google.
• Techcrunch View: Data Sources: Crunchbase, TechCrunch, and Yahoo!.
• Timeline View: Data Source: Google.
• Video x3 View: If you’re looking for video results, Viewzi allows you to view results from Youtube, Blinkx, and Veoh. Tags from videos are listed nicely above the video results Clicking on a tag allows users to dim videos they don’t wish to be included in the search results. Data Sources: BlinkX, Veoh, and YouTube.
• Viewzi News View: Data Sources: CNN, New York Times, Newsvine, Reuters, USA Today, and Yahoo! News.
• Weather View: Data Sources: Accuweather, Sunlight, Weather.com, and Yahoo! Weather.
• Web Screenshot View: The Web Screenshot view allows users to view screenshots of the pages of search results returned by Yahoo only. Up to 20 results are loaded at a time for maximum performance. However, once you get to the end of the set, 20 more are immediately loaded. Data Source: Yahoo!