Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Tired of Googling? Create Your Own Swicki

As you make your websites more interactive, you can now create a specialized Swicki hot search that uses the technology of Web 2.0 to embed the search in your website, designed and customized by you, a kind of modular search blog. Eurekster has created Swicki, a wiki that searches for particular things as defined by you, and that is set up to learn from you as you work with it. You create it and modify in an ongoing process.

The swicki adds value to your site. Swickis are communities that evolve a community intelligence as they learn the ideas you and your users project. You can make your site more relevant to your vsitors and participants, a place to go to find out focused information that is constantly changing. It operates much like a newsblog, but is more concise and compact. Swickis are the energy of the Internet waiting to be unleased by the power of a click.

Go to Eurekster and create an account. Follow these steps:
  1. Customize your Swicki by giving it a name. The name would reflect a specific focus such as "downloading music."
  2. Choose a layout that would work best on your website from the three options. Then enter the keywords and phrases that would exist like topics for your search, such as "music downloads, downloading techniques, soundfile sources, mp3, etc."
  3. Choose a design (test it by looking at the many options. Chose maximum font sizes and relative font sizes.
  4. Give your Swicki some hints about where to search. Identify the website that you want the search engine to be on and select categories that your search pertains to.
  5. Copy the code you have generated by your choices and paste into the appropriate place in your website (if it is a blog, then paste it into the template into the sidebar or the body, depending on the layout you chose.)
You can continue to change any aspect of it after you have created it. Just the act of creating a Swicki helps you focus on the parameters of your idea or topic. Create a search engine for model Flash-created websites. You would be amazed at what you uncover by the click of a mouse!

1 comment:

flute said...

I haven't heard of this and I think it's quite interesting. I gave it a try and did one for cocktails because everyone needs happy hour in their life!!!! I think I need to refine it a bit. Anyway, I posted it on the bottom of my blog. I am going to create a couple more and probably revise the alcohol one.