What is Quintura?
Quintura is a search engine much like Kartoo or Ujiko in that it presents information in a visual manner, rather than a straight text presentation. With Quintura, you search within a "tag cloud"; a collection of terms, usually related to each other in some way either by context or links.How does Quintura work?
Initially, Quintura works just like any other search engine: you type in a search term. However, that's where Quintura starts getting different. Your search term generates other related search terms that are then represented all together in one big tag cloud; and then your actual search results from the Web are presented below the tag cloud area.If you hover your mouse over any of these search terms, your search results will change. When you click on a tag within the tag cloud, that particular term is added to your original query; kind of a baked in effect, I suppose. If you see a term you don't want included in the tag cloud, just click on the X next to it and it's gone.
Quintura Pros and Cons
Quintura is easy to use, and it was especially interesting for me to see a vague term like "Web" be explored in ways that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of. In that regard, Quintura is a wonderful way to search the Web - you tend to turn up nuggets of information that you might not have otherwise.On the other hand, I found Quintura pretty clunky to use. Search results are confusing: they change constantly depending on where your mouse is in the tag cloud, and it's a bit tricky to form any kind of complicated search string.
Quintura Final Thoughts
Overall, I think Quintura has potential. It's interesting to see what results in the tag cloud come up for various terms. However, I would love to see some basic user-friendly improvements: better search interface, cleaner design, and a more solid delineation between the tag cloud and search results.
