This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here . The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Yahoo is revealing its new plans for search here at an event they’ve dubbed “Yahoo! SearchSpeak,” occurring now at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale. While the world’s second largest search engine is slated to be sucked up by the Microsoft mothership later this year, the search team hasn’t stopped developing new features for its search product

PicClick — which already offers a visual way to browse eBay — has just introduced an interface that offers a simple, fast and eye-catching way to find your favorite handmade goods. PicClick’s Etsy shop centers around visualization and displays images — filtered by category, best match, newly listed and oldest listings — based on search queries.

Visuals are an important part of advertising, so it’s not surprising that so many companies have jumped on the augmented reality bandwagon, offering tools that visualize their products in a magical and memorable way. Here we take a look at some pretty amazing promotional uses of this new tech that work with common webcams, giving everyone a chance to experience augmented reality — a trend that will be big in 2010.