Internet giant Yahoo might be goign through some tough times due to Microsoft’s year-long drive-by takeover drama, but the company is continuing to roll out new functionality and tools to keep users—and, hence, advertisers—glued to their services. The latest is SearchPad, a new tool currently in private testing that enables users to organize and annotate Web sites they find during searches, so they can easily organize and get back to information on a subject. And if this sounds a little like Google’s now-abandoned Notepad…you wouldn’t be far from the truth.
Yahoo says SearchPad evolved from user studies that shows users often keep a word processing document or other editor open to take note when they’re researching a subject on the Internet, whether that be doing product research before making a new purchase, planning a trip, checking out new music, or other personal or academic research. SearchPad tries to eliminate the awkwardness of switching back and forth between applications, an instead “intelligently” detects when users are using Yahoo’s search engine to conduct research, and enabling them to keep organized lists of sites, complete with excerpts and personal notes. Users can edit, delete, and re-order notes, put them on paper using a special printer-friendly format, and access their notes from anywhere online using their Yahoo ID. SearchPad’s interface is entirely within a standard Web page—it doesn’t require a separate application or window, and operates using a series of fly-outs.
Yahoo says it will make SearchPad public in a few months, although it is already available to a handful of Yahoo users. The company has posted a video demonstrating SearchPad’s features.
