See Stew. See Stew link. Link, Stew, link!
Yesterday, A9 launched OpenSearch, which I'm incredibly excited about. DeWitt already summed up the possibilities this has for exposing "the long tail of search," and I couldn't agree more.
What does this mean for you as a search consumer? Well, if you use A9.com (or any other future OpenSearch aggregator), you can now simultaneously query 56 search services (and counting) with one search.
Standard Issue Disclaimer: I work for A9. Speaking of which, we're hiring.
By the way, here's the intro graf I sent out when I started at A9.com more than a month ago now. It seems like a pretty reasonable "who I am these days" graf, so here we go:
"Oh boy, this is the part where I have to write an introduction that somehow makes me seem both incredibly interesting to know and work with, but not show offy either. Here goes: Benjy like the mouse, not like the dog. Went to Berkeley, majored in Cog Sci (the "other" CS). I worked at NexTag.com after graduation, and now I'm happily here. My hobbies include snowboarding, music in languages I don't speak, and looking for parking in San Francisco. I look forward to working with y'all, and if there are any scrabble fiends out there we should get a game going at lunch sometime.
And as Jim and Alex discovered yesterday, you probably won't want to be in the room if I'm playing table tennis."
And if you haven't checked out A9.com yet, you totally should.
How the hell d... Oh, actually, those are all good questions, but what I really wanted to know is "how the hell does this thing work?"