One of my latest projects is a new product at AOL/AIM called AIM Pages. Its a system that allows anyone to create a web page in a matter of minutes. Not only can you set up the page quickly but you can choose a variety of themes and content blocks to express yourself however you would like. The pages are built upon the Buddy platform that is built into AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). For clarity, the Buddy platform is a network of buddies or friends that you chat with via the application. I found that once I had my own AIM Page created, I was getting contacted every now and then by people I didn’t know. I wanted a way to learn more about the person who was contacting me without having to engage in conversation or chat. If I could simply type in a screen name and search AIM Pages, I could see if the person had a page to see if this is someone I already know. Better yet, if the search were built into the browser, I could perform this search in a just a few seconds.

I’ve been wanting to do this for some time but didn’t know how. After floating the idea around the office I received some information and encouragement from at least a couple developers to tell me that it was easy to do (easy for a developer at least). Development of this type is certainly out of my comfort zone but I’m dangerous enough with code to at least give it a try. It turns out that the most difficult part is simply figuring out how to decifer the search parameters. Once you’ve got that, it is quite simple in fact.

Long story short, after a few tests I created my first browser search plugin. Once I figured this out for AIM Pages I wanted to see if I could replicate it for a few other sites that I search quite often where a plugin. Those sites are AOL UnCut Videos, a user-submission video site I just helped get out the door, and Twangville, a music blog I administer. Here are links to all three plugins for you to try out yourself. All you need to do is click the title of the plugin to install. The browser will ask you what you want to do with it. Just click ‘OK’ and then you will see the search selection in the upper right corner of your browser.

Browser Search Plugins*:

• AIM Pages
• AOL UnCut Video
• Twangville

*requires a Mozilla-based browser (Firefox, Flock, etc. Not IE)

Thanks to Paul Petty and Shawn Carnell at AOL for giving me the info I needed to make this happen.