When you don't want the whole pie

A few days ago an item jumped out at me in the New York Times headlines email--Google had just introduced a new feature allowing users to create custom searches for their own websites. You might think this is one more bell-and-whistle from an already somewhat tubby corporate marketing department, but if you haven't seen much of your resident geek for the last few days, it's because he or she has closed the office door to be alone with the exciting possibilities. Search engine users since the beginning of time--1994 that is--have been looking for ways to clean out the million-hit clutter that makes finding things online such a crapshoot. I've spent about six hours over the last two days creating something that has been talked about for years, but never done--a search tool that looks at all public radio sites, and only at public radio sites. Check out the test page. Fast, clean, ad-free, cost-free. I'm in heaven.

My fellow webnaut Bill Haenel has been exploring other possibilities--building a search universe that corresponds to the map--in this case, the North Country. His project has a more commercial cast, drawing revenue from ad-sharing and sales. Check out his efforts at North Country Search. Usually, the bigger a dot.com gets, the smaller its brain becomes. Nice to see one bucking the trend with a truly useful innovation.