Taxonomic Search Engine added to Amazon's A9 search engine

[Roderic Page]

Amazon.com have entered the search engine business with A9
(http://a9.com ), a search engine that can use pretty much anything as
a source of data. As a result, you can customise the sources being
searched by choosing from a wide range of providers (called "columns").
A9 will store your preferences if you log into the site (if you have
ever been an Amazon.com customer you already have a password).

As a quick experiment I have added the Taxonomic Search Engine to A9.
If you are interested, go to A9, and click on the Add Columns to your
Search Results link on the right
(http://a9.com/-/search/moreColumns.jsp ). Type "TSE" into the "Search
columns" box and TSE will appear. Search for a taxonomic name and you
should see it listed in its own column, complete with links to the
original database.

TSE is not, of itself, a terribly exciting column. However, A9 has a
lot of potential as an easy way for data providers to make their data
accessible as part of a larger search. For example, somebody with a
collection of images for a particular taxonomic group could easily
become a source for A9, so that a search on a their favourite taxon
would retrieve those images, in addition to information from other
sources. People interested in "species banks" might find this a simple
way to get started.

Regards

Rod

Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

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