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RSS feedsAmazon has announced a new content syndication service that will allow users to create their own personalised federated search environment.
A9.com's OpenSearch service will bring together content suppliers as diverse as the British Library, PubMed, the New York Times and Creative Commons in a single search interface - more powerful than many library portals.
Amazon's A9.com search site allows registered users to personalise their interface, build up a customisable display of relevant search "columns", and maintain a history of previous searches.
Announcing the new features at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego, Amazon's ceo Jeff Bezos spun a line that will send shivers down the spine of Google and MSN executives: "We want OpenSearch to do for search what RSS has done for content".
Content providers who have already made their platforms available on OpenSearch include Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia; flickr, a public photo search service; and furl.net, a collection of bookmarks to significant resources created by web users.
Also included is Creative Commons, a search service that lets you find photos, music, text and other works whose authors want you to reuse their content for free, and without asking permission to use it (though with clear acknowledgements).
The new site allows users to show the results of a search in a series of columns - beginning with A9.com's search for web links and web images, alongside relevant results from the books that have been digitally scanned at Amazon (as part of the "Look Inside" initiative for book browsing). Users can then add or remove columns by clicking on a list on the right of the interface.
The interface also has user customisation features that will help give A9.com an edge: a "Your diary" feature lets users associate notes with websites; while a beta version of a feature called "Discover" allows access to alerts based on the searches already carried out.
Amazon's move into RSS-based search technology, to harness the power of external content providers, is likely to be seen as a retaliation against Google's announcements of wholesale book and library digitisation (moving into Amazon territory) with its Google Print initiative.
