The KartOO visual meta search engine

As an aside I was just noting how a search interface could blend a Googlish approach with images. Meet the KartOO search engine, from France–discussed in the Wikipedia. Roll your mouse over the icon representing www.teleread.com and you’ll see an image of the TeleRead site’s home page. You’ll also see lines appearing to connect this item with the most related ones. Same for other icons. Now, what if images besides those of Web pages popped up–or perhaps the icons themselves had real-world images associated with them: say, a Ford automobile if you searched for Ford the company? Oh, and you’ll notice a topic map to the left when you visit the actual KartOO site. In fact, you might say this is more a cousin of Vivisimo than Google. One negative: Slowness. Hunch: I’d expect a speed-up in future versions.