Today we’re adding a new tool to this blog–see the top of the right side bar. [Update: This new tool has since been removed.] It’s a "Swicki," a particularly interesting example of the new breed of customizable search engines, which we wrote about last week here.

We’ve customized this search engine to zero in on publishing-related sites that we consider particularly useful and on topics in the field that we believe are hot. That makes it especially suited to you, the audience that reads this blog.

But this is a collaborative search engine, which is why it sounds like "wiki". As you use it, you will be "training" it to serve you better. Part of the training is passive: The Swicki pays attention to which search results you click on. But you also can actively register your likes and dislikes by clicking on the various icons that appear to the right of each result.

And this search engine has a "buzz cloud" showing the most popular terms searched by the community of our blog readers. Click on the bigger labels to see results of the more popular searches. We’re tapping the wisdom of our specialized crowd here; it doesn’t get more Web 2.0 than that.

We hope you find this specialized Swicki so useful that it brings you back to our blog on a regular basis. And we hope that it prompts you to create one to serve your own audience.