I wanted to give you an update on Tafiti, Microsoft’s experimental site that explores the intersection between Silverlight and Windows Live Search.  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.

When the Tafiti.com site went live, I did a couple of interviews where I said that we would make the code public if people were interested. We recieved a fair amount of interest, and linked up with Angus Logan's Windows Live Apps team to do just that.

Today, I'm happy to announce the release of the Tafiti Search Visualization source code to CodePlex which means developers can download, modify, and resell the code (see MS-PL License for all the details).

The CodePlex project provides access to all of the source, which you can use in it's entirety or piece meal based on your needs. The project includes a number of Silverlight controls, code that wraps the Live Search SOAP API, contains code for posting to your Live Space blog, and is also working example of how to incorporate Windows Live ID into your apps. We've also included the code for the tree screensaver that so many people commented on.

When we released Tafiti, I had a chance to sit down with Beet.TV for an interview/webcast.

This can be found here: http://www.beet.tv/2007/09/tafiti-microsof.html

The link to the standalone video can be found here: http://blip.tv/file/377555

Note: this was before we added the limited edition Halo skin to Tafiti. To get to the UI listed here, use the link in the upper right corner of the UI.

Getting ready for the tafiti launch, I had the chance to have a discussion with Jon Udell at Channel 9 last week. We talked about incubation, services, mashups and tafiti.

The abstract for the session is - 

"Marc works on the platform incubation team. In this podcast we discuss what platform incubuation means, how the Tafiti project exemplifies it, and what the future may hold not only for Tafiti but for a platform that's evolving to encompass both software and services. "

The podcast of that conversation is now on the main page over at Channel 9 (channel9.msdn.com), the permalink for it is here - http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=335996

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.on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-tafiti/

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

http://www.tafiti.com/walkthru.html

More to come as the week progresses....