There are now two alternative search engines with practically the same concept and design; Symbaloo and Sputtr. Each one features a home page covered with tiny square buttons. Each allows you to change the page, add or delete buttons; move them around. And each has a limited selection, for now.

This is good; we are watching innovation.

I was just talking to Sputtr, asking them when I could create my own button by entering a search engine of my own choosing.

Here’s their answer: “Please note that the total number of search engine choices that you can add to the page will increase rapidly over time. Please be patient with us as we add more search options to the list over the coming weeks – we’re currently aiming to add around 10 new search engines every week!”

Here’s the same question put to Symbaloo:

Can I add blocks myself (e.g. a link to a site I use every day)?

“At this moment, no! But within a few weeks it will be possible. Until that moment you may find our bookmark widget (the 2nd green block) useful.”

So who’s going to be the first one to allow you and me to fully customize our own homepages?

Round One: Symbaloo

Please try this at home:

1) Go to: www.symbaloo.com

2) You will see a whole bunch of colored squares, but in the middle will be two columns of blank gray squares.

3) Put your mouse over one of these gray squares and you will see a green “+” sign and the words “add here.” Click on the green “+” symbol.

4) A large white box will pop up that says, “Add Content.” In the middle will be a row of six colored boxes. But above those squares it will say: Search Modules | Links | News Feeds | Widgets. Click on the words, “News Feeds.”

5) The white box will change. On the left will be a series of icons, and on the right will be three boxes. The bottom box will say, “Add your own feed.” You’re almost done!

6) In that box, type in: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AltSearchEngines

7) To the right of that box, click on the “add” button.

8 The program will process it, and the square will now say, “feeds.feedburner.com.”

9) It will not say, “AltSearchEngines;” that’s something that Symbaloo has to work on.

10) Click on that new square and see what pops up in the very middle!

I have just invited Sputtr and Symbaloo to leave remarks in the comments section.

Of course your comments are especially welcome!

Pluggd’s brand new HearHere feature lets you quickly find the portions of an audio or video podcast that interest you. It actually searches for the sections where your search term is mentioned! Pretty nifty. Click on the ‘View a Demonstration’ bar and then the ‘See How it Works’ button to watch a tour of it in action or click on one of the ‘Listen’ buttons below to try it out for yourself.

At Pluggd, you can:

Discover podcasts based on your interests and the interests of others.

Experience and listen to them online, or download them to your PC or mobile device.

Share your opinion on podcasts by rating them and passing them on to friends.

Most people are familiar with this trick; you type into Google a selection of ingredients and the word ‘recipe,’ and it returns a perfect recipe.

But here at AltSearchEngines, we contend that the “Alts” can often surpass the major search engines by focusing all of their energies on one particular aspect of search. So, is RecipeMatcher better than the Google trick? That’s exactly what I asked them.

“Yes, RecipeMatcher is better than searching recipes on Google and I’ll tell you why.

Sure, Google is great for a lot of things, but searching recipes is not one of them. With Google you can type in a couple ingredients and the word “recipe” and get a list of some decent recipes from many different websites. This is known as a search based on ingredients. Are any of them reviewed and tested? Sometimes. Do any of these recipes tell you what ingredients you need to pick up on the way home from work? Never. This type of search is good for the individual that is not interested in efficiency and taste. At RecipeMatcher, we’ve taken this ingredient search many steps further.

With RecipeMatcher, users can sign up for a free account and keep an inventory of all the groceries and ingredients that they have at home. From there, users can search thousands of delicious and tested recipes. The best thing about this search is that the searches return delicious recipes ranked by the highest percentage of ingredients you already have at home. RecipeMatcher will even tell you what ingredients you are missing and with a click of a button users can have a short grocery list of items you need to pick up at the store on the way home from work.”

Thanks, RecipeMatcher!

Yumgo – the name says it all!??

Recipe Matcher – Better than Google?

Fabric Connect – Search 6,000 fabrics!

Winzy! Win prizes! Even the name is cute!