14 DAY TRIAL // Google Experimental has come up with a couple of viewing modes to enhance the search experience for its users. People were getting kind of tired with the old "10 pages per page, white background, blue links" mode and started voicing their desire for something new. After working to improve the algorithm in order to make search more relevant (that will still be going on, it's still a work in progress), the dev team has decided to address the visualization issue.
The new features added to the search are the Map View, Timeline view and Info view. The first is very useful in case you're searching for something happening somewhere in the world that you'd like to be at. Take CES 2008 for example, if you wanted to attend it, you'd probably just have gotten the address where to go, or perhaps a map to the place, if you were lucky. The new visualization pinpointed it on a map from the first try. Or, say, you were to search for a decent restaurant, it's the same situation, with the addendum that you could zoom in and out of the map and then with a quick "Update Results" click, the returns would only be featured from the area you would be viewing.
The Timeline view deals with the same kind of search, but for dates. It will show you a graph of how the results for your query are spread throughout the time, be it past or future, for upcoming events. Zoom is also available for this visualization, and after doing that the results will be narrowed as well, in order to match the period.
The third mode is the Info view and it looks to be a variant of the normal view, mashed together with the Timeline view, image view, Map view and some additional measurements. It will feature a panel on the right that will display the most relevant related information, for a "space exploration" query you'd get the date of the Sputnik launch for "dates", the equivalent for timeline, for images you'd get the traditional pictures related to the keywords you input and so forth.
Get them while they're hot!