Microsoft Tafiti, the forgettable Silverlight search experience

Microsoft has been keen to get me to take a look at a new experimental site launched to showcase the potential of its Silverlight technology. Tafiti, which apparently means 'do research' in Swahili, is the site in question. An exploration of two trends: search specialization and the Web 2.0 rich user experience. It is meant to help people use the Web for research that spans multiple queries and sessions, and does this by letting them visualize, store and share the results. Or at least that is the theory. In practice what you get is an undeniably visually attractive interface that uses Microsoft Silverlight, but a pretty poor search experience in conjunction with the Microsoft Live Search engine.