Search the blogs of the Miami IA Summit

I've put together another couple of tools for people attending, or interested, in the upcoming IA Summit in Miami in April.

I've made a Google Custom Search Engine, which allows you to search over the blogs and personal sites of speakers and attendees.

I've doubled the number of sources from the 37 bloggers speaking at the conference I previously identified. As well as searching over the conference's official site, the custom search engine will return results from another 36 personal sites I've spotted by using the profiles people have put up on the conference's social network.

What is the thinking behind this?

Well, supposing I'd like to meet people at the conference who specialise in wireframes, or write about UML, or out of interest, anyone who has ever visited Hong Kong. The IA Summit 2008 custom search engine will bring back references to any of the attendees with blogs who have written about those things, and then I can go and mark them as 'want to meet' on the conference Crowdvine.

That's the theory anyway. The majority of the blogs or portfolio sites are UX and IA related, although there are some that are more personal, specialise in prospective California legislation, or illustrate how an IA should deal with L.A. road rage.

There are three ways that you can access the search engine. You can use the widget below, visit the homepage provided by Google, or download a search plugin for your browser.

The search plugin, like the ones I developed for searching the BBC or British Newspapers, are based on the OpenSearch protocol, so should work on many modern browsers, including Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.

  IA Summit 2008 custom search engine  [Add this search to your browser]

The additional bloggers and personal sites in the search engine index include contributions from Adam Polansky, Brad Lauster, Chiara Fox, Christian Crumlish, Crystal Kubitsky, Dave Burke, Dorelle Rabinowitz , Ed Dale, Gordon Montgomery, James Melzer, Jan Jursa, Javier Velasco Martín, Jeff Stevenson, Jim Housden, Joao Paulo Lages, Jon Hadden, Keith Instone, Lance Nishihira, Livia Labate , Liz Danzico, Louis Rosenfeld, Lynn, Madonnalisa Chan, Mario Bourque, Michel Vuijlsteke, Noreen Whysel , Olly Wright, Paul Trumble, Pete Stahl, Richard Dalton, Rick Spencer, Russ Unger, Susan Patrick, Thom Haller, and Victor Lombardi.

I'll be monitoring the new members on Crowdvine to look for others to add. In the meantime, if you feel you should be included - or would rather your site be excluded - you can email me at martin.belam@currybet.net

[Disclosure: Google provide the Custom Search Engine service as a way to increase their advertising revenue. Results on the IA Summit search engine will feature adverts placed by Google. As an incentive to use the service, advertising revenue is shared with the person who made the search engine]

Posted by Martin Belam, February 15, 2008
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