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Qwiki is the worlds first visual information engine. Created and maintained by members of the Mabuchi Lab at Caltech, it is the first to turn information into an experience. With Qwiki, you enter a search term and rather than receiving back a list of links, you receive a narrated video/audio experience. In essense, it communicates to you in a more traditional sense practiced for thousands of years: Storytelling.

Qwiki is software that strings together content from the web collecting information from sites including Google, Fotopedia, Youtube and Wikipedia and combines the audio, visual, and textual assets into a multimedia format called a “Qwiki”. Note that the team members at Qwiki aptly suggest that they are more of a platform, not a search engine because the response to queries are provided as more of an informational experience rather than an aggregation of results.

How does Qwiki work? Basically, Qwiki turns popular Internet topics into an interactive presentation on your chosen search term. It is accompanied with narration by a computerized voice (female to be exact). For instance, type in “Buenos Aires” and you’ll get a mix of photos, videos, and interactive maps, accompanied by a voice-over summary. Qwiki is giving the real humans (us) more convenience in this cluttered world of information. We tried Qwiki’s Megan Fox demo and felt good about it. Click here to experience it yourself.

Qwiki works by turning popular internet topics into an interactive presentation. The results presented are accompanied with a female computerized voice. For example, take a query, say “International Space Station” and Qwiki builds an interactive video for presentation.

Click here to experience it for yourself:
International Space Station

For an example of how Qwiki presents information regarding a personalge, take a look at it presentation of actress Megan Fox:
Megan Fox

Like a well-traveled friend, it provides you an experience about a person, place, or thing, empowering you to click on various pieces of facts presented so that you can drill down on the story’s elements and further explore through other related Qwikis. Note – Qwikis are not human generated – they are generated via machine through they may have a human feel to them given the visual and narrated experience.

Qwiki operates as a web application via desktops, notebooks, mobile devices and tablets. Essentially Qwikis can be embedded anywhere on the internet including all iOS devices.

Having experienced this technology for myself over the last few days in it’s alpha mode, I have to ask if Qwiki truly represents a disruptive way in the presentation and consumption of information (in piecemeal) or if it’s simply another vertical for consuming what’s already available via traditional search. As it’s in early Alpha right now, that remains to be seen but it is quite different and while I provide it for you here as an honorable mention.