Spezify is a new attempt at creating an easy-to-browse visual search engine. I’m not sure where I first saw it last week, I think it was on Mashable, but Larry Ferlazzo also wrote a short piece about it last week.

To use Spezify, type a word or phrase at the top of the page where it reads “enter any word here.” There is not a clearly defined search box so hopefully they fix that in the next phase of beta development. After typing your search word, Spezify searches Google and Yahoo for results. Results are displayed visually with small screen captures, images, and text boxes. You can browse the search results using the arrow keys on your keyboard or using your mouse.

Applications for Education
Spezify may have potential for use as a general search tool as it does provide more results per page than a typical list format of results. Students searching for a broad topic may be able to browse results faster than they can when search results are in list form. The search refinement options are fairly limited right now so it wouldn’t be a good tool for much more than general searches.

Here are some related resources that may be of interest to you:
Links You Might Have Missed – Internet Search Tools
Refine Google Searches With Cloudlet
Triplify – Three Search Engines in One