Slashdot Mirror
A9.com with Syndicated Search
joeykiller writes "Search Engine Watch reports that Amazon now lets you add your own search to their A9 search engine. Users can opt-in to use additional search engines in addition to A9.com's own when searching. Amazon has chosen to use an extension of RSS 2.0 for this, and hopes that this format will enable search syndication in the same way RSS did for content. Several add-on searches are available already, among them New York Times, Wikipedia and NASA."
I've been using Firefox's configurable search feature for a while (you can add plug-ins for things like IMDB and Dictionary.com, and then select the engine you want before searching.) While it's a great idea in theory, it also is a little more clumsy than you'd normally want. I've ended up doing too many searches for "Linux USB XYZ-123 driver" in Dictionary.com or Wikipedia or whatever, because it doesn't reset itself after each search. After a while, you stop using it - it's just not quite what it needs to be.
A9 will improve itself with this kind of feature. But, more importantly (like I said, two levels, by adopting this RSS-extension, it will encourage others to do likewise, which means other developers can put together tools for this kind of quick-search without having to learn a hundred different search engine APIs. This means there'll be enough tinkering with UIs for it to be virtually certain someone will come up with something usable.
At the moment, searching on the Internet's a little like a bunch of 1960s style fast food outle[tt]s. You get your basic cheese burger virtually every where, but it's literally just a bun, a beef burger, and a slice of cheese. A few places are adding pickles (like Google, you might call news the pickle, or groups the tomato ketchup), but we're a long way away from, say, the engines offering delicious Whoppers. If we want to have search engines that give us the full lettuce, mayo, ketchup, onion, tomato, etc, we need to standardize on protocols in much the same way as outfits like MacDonalds and Burger King were able to create efficient food transportation systems for raw ingredients beyond simple buns and beef. This is Amazon giving us the lettuce of Wikipedia and mayo of the NYT to us, asking us if we want the fries of NASA, and it's a step towards them offering "have it your way." Awesome.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
echo -n blabla | md5sum | cut -b 1-5
I have looked at A9 OpenSearch in the past, and what I can't see is any way to retrieve the OpenSearch description documents that people have submitted.
At the moment, it looks like A9 are keeping these to themselves. So you can make your search engine compatible with A9, but you can't use other people's engines without their OpenSearch document.
I think A9 should release these documents!
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
Well, I can see how this can be commercially exploited: Imagine best-deal/coupon/bargain search engines syndicated with A( OpenSearch and people willingly subscribing to these searches because they love good deals? The only difference will be that now they won't have to leave their primary seaarch engine. A9 has something here with the potential to drive a lot of business! And I guess they can collect a lot of information and simply use it to sell more products on amazon.com, being the largest/broadest online store and all that. Cool.