Middlespot (seen above) gives you text results for searches in one pane on the left of the site, complemented by a large gallery of visual results in a pane on the right. The graphical gallery on the right is the heart and soul of the site, and it allows you to pan and zoom results. As you hover your mouse cursor over any particular graphic in Middlespot, you get a larger view of it, which is an improvement on the tiny thumbnail views that many visual search engines provide.

Whenever you hover over any particular graphic in Middlespot, you get a Save to Workpad option that allows you to collect graphics you’re interested. I could see this being very useful for web designers and graphics folks who want to collect large samples of images and then drill down toward the best ones. You can view a demo of Middlespot here.

I was less impressed with Search-Cube, which presents graphical search results on a large 3-D cube that you can rotate using arrow keys or by holding the Shift key down and dragging with your mouse. (Below are results for a search on “netbooks.”) The 3-D cube looks sharp at first glance, but I didn’t find it to present an easy way to get at what I wanted.

Search-Cube could get better in future versions, though. For example, take a look at some of the screenshots of uBrowser, found here at the bottom of the page. It’s currently more of an experiment than a finished product, but it looks remarkably slick and also works with cubes, spheres and other 3-D interfaces for displaying search results.

What visual search engines do you use?

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