We once asked if Apple’s CoverFlow is a better interface for image search than the typical thumbnail grid approach. But what about for mobile search? SearchMe thinks it is good for both.
The visual search engine that launched last March is working on a natural extension: a visual search app for the iPhone. The app is ready, but the company is still waiting for it to be approved by Apple for the iTunes App Store. Co-Founder John Holland showed me a functioning version of the app earlier this week at TechCrunch50.
I like SearchMe better on the iPhone than I do on my laptop. The idea of flipping through images to find something is already ingrained into some of the most basic features of the iPhone—whether it is flipping through photos or the app menu itself. Maybe I’ve been too well-trained by Google, but when I am searching on my computer, I find it hard to beat the efficiency of skimming down a list of text links. When I do a search on my iPhone, though, I am always squinting and resizing the browser.
SearchMe isn’t a perfect solution. It presents search results as a series of thumbnails showing each Webpage, but you have to flip through them sequentially. SearchMe does let you narrow results by clicking on a topic icon. Still, it lends itself to certain types of searches better than others—when you are grazing for information, rather than looking for something specific.
The CoverFlow-like interface sometimes sometimes gets in the way. But sometimes it lets you find exactly what you want by letting you preview each age before clicking on it. I kind of wish it was an interface option on a regular search engine that I could turn on or off depending on what type of search I am doing. But on mobile devices, search is broken. So I’m more willing to try new things.
it is an empirical question… anybody know of any hardcore usability tests of the cover flow ui? sure it’s cool, but i’d love to see some real numbers describing how its browsing speed and accuracy compares to other methods….
once for all: apple did NOT invent cover flow UI. the team behind microsoft surface did, about 5 years ago.
I don’t see anyone claiming they did. Anyways, no matter who originally thought up the interface, Apple bought their particular implementation from a third party–Steel Skies–hardly inventing it.
http://www.searchme.com is horrible… please don’t encourage this startup
Why would u say somethin like that? I think what they r doing is amazing… and I enjoy surfing web using their apps… not a bad start at all…:(
Are you really going to tell me that searchme.com is a faster, more effective way to search than… oh, let’s say GOOGLE??? I mean seriously? How can you read the page to see if the information is relevant to your search? It’s hard enough to do that using searchme.com on an actual computer. On a iPhone it’s damn near impossible. Reading text is more effective and efficient.
That’s the craziest statement, I’ve ever read. There’s definitely a niche area that SearchMe can fill compared to others in both the search and visual search arenas. The interface on the iPhone is seamless and the stacks feature is quite unique on SO many levels.
lol i won’t
1 point I’d like to raise ….. bandwidth …. do some bandwidth tests on this with your 3G iphone and you wont have much data left
I have a beta copy on my iPhone and have tested it out (using http://bandwidthplace.com). I don’t see much of a difference in data usage between SearchMe and Safari. I was shocked at how quickly you can browse pages from the iPhone. If you know of a better way to test data usage please let me know. I’ve changed my web browsing from Safari to SearchMe because of its ability to load multiple pages faster. The SearchMe application is visually more appealing on the iPhone than other search applications. I’m excited to use their final version available through Apple in the next couple of weeks.
I have a beta copy and it brings up both a low res and high res version of the web page (that is actually very readable in zoom up view) in about one tenth the time it takes to load the original web site. I can get the first 5 pages in about 5 seconds in 3g mode.
Does the app have a widescreen mode? The interface seems crammed.
The website at least has enough space to fully display the next and previous site thumbs–useful, insofar as site thumbs are useful at all.
The first image does show that the app has a wide screen mode which is also shows a search results in coverflow mode…
Sweet crackers, you’re right. Well, it offers a marginal improvement in experience at the expense of having to rotate back to vertical to do anything else, but it’s something.
First time I check on this site…
Very good
My opinion is that the results are good enough for a starter in search engines…
awesome!!!
Awesome stuff, I think this searchme visual search engine will really spice up the iPhone and iPod Touch.
I met them at TC50. Check out the short video demo that I shot.
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roar, this is so awesome!
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Cool “feature”. Its all about the quality of the results. I’m not going to waste my time if I believe I will get better results from another engine. Time will tell.
Forget… it.. In India the iphone is the most uncool thing
I think searchme.com can be embedded into W910i too.