Disclaimer as I have used these guys recently for a solr search project - but not affiliated in any way - and their product is very good. Twigkit: http://www.twigkit.com/ gives you a very slick and simple way to make attractive front ends to solr (or other search engines). For us it was the best of both worlds, as we were able to save by leveraging solr, but then add the stuff these guys brought to the table to really round the whole thing off.
In a couple of days they gave us a very slick UI that killed the crappy prototype one we had managed to build!
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer as I have used these guys recently for a solr search project - but not affiliated in any way - and their product is very good. Twigkit: http://www.twigkit.com/ gives you a very slick and simple way to make attractive front ends to solr (or other search engines). For us it was the best of both worlds, as we were able to save by leveraging solr, but then add the stuff these guys brought to the table to really round the whole thing off. In a couple of days they gave us a very slick UI that killed the crappy prototype one we had managed to build!