Google announced their Custom Search Engine Beta. Like the similar Rollyo service, Google CSE allows you to specify the sites you want searched. You can also tell the CSE to search the entire Google index, but give weight to those sites. It also gives you the option of excluding sites. You can also use patterns to specify parts of sites, e.g. to filter out urls including certain words.

There is an option to include the search form and results in your own site. To see that in action check out this job search page on my site.

One of the nicer features is refinement labels. This allows you to tag sites with a descriptive label that can be used to refine results. If, for example, you label sites in your set using facets, e.g. subject, type, etc., then those can be used to narrow the result set.

You can see the CSE I'm playing with for UX-related sites to see how this works (e.g. search for "sparklines"):

Or try this search of some of the newish niche web design/development job sites:

I've made these CSEs open so anyone can contribute to them by adding other UX-related sites to the list. I've also set the CSEs to limit to the sites specified. I tried with the option to search all of Google, but I noticed a little noise because many of the results were outside of the UX scope. It's simple enough, I suppose, to expand the search by clicking the "Web" radio.

I'm not sure how much I'll actually use this. I stopped using Rollyo after playing with it for a few days. But the added refinement functionalities make this service a bit more useful to me.

Here's an interesting job posting that came via Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter. Microsoft is hiring senior user experience people to "engage in a dialog about the impact of user experience on business and life." Fascinating!

Job Opening: Microsoft (Microsoft User Experience Evangelists )
Company: Microsoft
Title: Microsoft User Experience Evangelists
Location: San Francisco/Bay Area and New York
Salary: $80 – 130K + bonus + options

Are you 'all about' user experience? Do you have a passion for design and the creative process, technical exposure in design and web development technologies, and curiosity and exceptional communication and presentation skills?

We are looking for User Experience Evangelists across the US and globally to engage the broader design community in a dialogue about the impact of user experience on business and life in general, and on how Microsoft's newest platforms and tools (MS Expression release 2007) are leading the market in enabling customers to build rich, immersive, compelling end-user experiences. These are NOT sales roles. Additionally, you will form a critical part of a strategic end user experience research group that delivers accurate feedback to the product development teams.

I'm not advertising this as much as I'm pointing it out as a bit of commentary. That they're taking user experience seriously is a good thing. But the Apple user in me wonders what it means that they're hiring people to sell it. Apple hires designers who espouse it and then let it emerge as an integral part of that brand's promise. Design is a core value at Apple. Is there a sea change in Microsoft where we can expect this kind of transformation into a company that truly cares at its core about elegant and simple user experiences rather than merely slapping on a graphic, rolling out it's long list of features and calling it user friendly?

I'm reminded of the Presentation Zen blog entry comparing the presentation styles of executives at Apple vs. at Microsoft. Apple presentations exude simplicity and elegance. Microsoft presentations pour everything at you including the kitchen sink. It's like the difference between a designer's approach to displaying a list and an engineer's. The designer obsesses over how to communicate effectively. The engineer takes care to be comprehensive in her presentation. (Sorry for the generalizations.) But I've digressed a bit haven't I?

I'm just wondering what brought about this need to hire evangelists. I wonder how they can "make" an evangelist of someone. I wonder how effective this campaign will be. Is it an attempt at viral marketing of the simplicity meme? I don't know. But if you're interested in applying, contact Rita Sue Siegel Associates.

OK/Cancel consolidates publicly available and privately submitted job postings in HCI, Usability, User Experience, Interaction Design, Information Architecture and Ergonomics.

Mark Hurst's listing of UX jobs.

Very simple to use job search engine that provides RSS feeds for searches.