Web Search Gets Smarter with Yahoo! Axis
While today’s Web search that throws you in a jungle of irrelevant data continues to be a pain in the neck, Yahoo! is trying out a new search approach.
It has released something called Yahoo! Axis, which aims to provide a smarter search experience to users. Axis allows you to enter your search, see and interact with visual results, all without ever leaving the page you are on.
It seamlessly integrates with your favorite desktop browser and automatically connects your online experiences across multiple devices. It is available for download across iOS devices and as a desktop plug-in for HTML5-enabled browsers.
“Our search strategy is predicated on two core beliefs—one, that people want answers, not links and two, that consumer-facing search is ripe for innovative disruption,” said Shashi Seth, senior vice president, Connections, Yahoo! Inc. “With Axis, we have re-defined and re-architected the search and browse experience from the ground up.”
According to Yahoo!, Axis provides a cross-device experience, including:
Smarter, Faster Search with Rich Design: Axis gives people instant answers and visual previews so they can continuously discover and explore content without interruption. Axis’ sleek design keeps people moving forward rather than constantly returning to a page of endless blue links. Once on a search results site, Axis also lets people simply swipe or click to the next result.
Connected Experience: Axis allows people to move seamlessly across devices. Upon downloading Axis, people can start a search on their computer, flip through the results while out on their iPhone, and finish the search at home on their iPad. Content can be easily shared by email, Pinterest and Twitter.
Personalized Home Page: After signing in with Yahoo!, Google or Facebook credentials, Axis centralizes online lives with a customizable Home Page that provides direct access to their favorite sites, saved articles and bookmarks across all devices where Axis has been downloaded.
Standalone Mobile Browser, Desktop Plug-In: On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Axis serves as a standalone mobile browser app. On the desktop, Axis is a browser plug-in that works with Firefox 7+, Safari v5+, Internet Explorer 9 and all versions of Chrome.
Technology Backbone: Axis is built upon the Yahoo! Cocktails mobile development platform, which is designed for creating deeply personalized products that are built for connected devices first. Comprised of Mojito, an open source JavaScript MVC framework and Manhattan, a cloud-based hosted environment, Cocktails is a blend of open, standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and Node.JS.
The new Yahoo! Axis App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.iTunes.com/appstore/.
Photo courtesy: Yahoo!
