Pat and Julieanne also introduced me to Swickis.

A swicki is a customized search engine focused on whatever topic you want.

A few minutes ago, I added a swicki to the home page and the search page at A Year From Now.

Last week, I created and added a swicki to almost every page on A Portal for Cherokee County, NC.

Each of these topic-focused customized search engines produce better results than I get from Google, Yahoo, and MSN -- at least from my viewpoint.

It took less than an hour to create and train each swicki, and they will now learn from the community of visitors who search with them.

There's still a lot to learn about this, but I'm finding them very useful, so far.

Perhaps you'll find a use for one (or more), too.