Searchlet Adds New Features, Including Image And Streaming Music Searches

Searchlet launched three months ago to make online searches easier and help users avoid the dreaded Google amnesia. Now the Web app has added several features, including integration with Google Images and music streaming sites, that make it even more handy.

Created by Mark Fazzini and Spencer Simonsen, a web programmer and developer at LinkedIn, Searchlet is a bookmarklet that displays a sidebar with results from different online resources when you highlight a term on a site.

Instead of clicking on a result link to visit the site in a new tab, the latest version of Searchlet lets you view entire Web pages or play streaming music within the sidebar, without having to leave the site you were originally looking at.

Searchlet windowThe new Searchlet also lets you create an account and customize your sidebar to display only the results you want. For example, you can now set Searchlet to automatically search Google Images, Twitter, Urban Dictionary, and music streaming sites like Grooveshark.

Of course, Searchlet is still integrated with Google, Wikipedia, Google News, and open content dictionary Wiktionary, its first four resources.

I’m especially keen on the integration of Google Images because that means I can now use Searchlet as a visual dictionary when I’m reading Chinese-language sites (I find this useful for celebrity names, slang, and other terms that usually don’t get included in online dictionaries).

In addition to its latest update, Searchlet also plans to launch a new service called Searchlet for Business, which will allow site owners to add the Searchlet sidebar so visitors can use it on their Web pages or blog without installing the bookmarklet. This can potentially increase the amount of time visitors spend engaged with a site, increasing page views and lowering its bounce rate. A mobile version is also in the works.