OpenSearch
Tue Mar 29 2005 13:05 MST #Oh, my a9 just released opensearch. It is insanely cool. It just eliminates all the problems with distributed searches. Deep web searches, aggregated searches. If you have a search engine and can write an RSS feed, you can drop your engine in a9. People can drag and drop it to there search page. And you are done.
Of course it's also open -- you can add others sites to your search engine -- it is truly open search. This solves so many problems it is insane.
BTW: a9 is my current default engine. It uses google and has some other nice engines (such as CPAN Search) :) . But what I love is that my search history is tracked -- and if I do a search 2x it's clear which sites I visited (this is toolbar/history muckery -- but still handy).