Hi All-

Praveen (a talented programmer working on the interface to Mapdex) has built a beta version of a Mapdex spatial search.  This search allows the user to limit layers returned by the geographic extent of the source layers.  Users can search by address, city, or zip (currently for US only, we will be adding a global city/country search in the future).  To implement this search we are taking advantage of the Address Finder (geocoding tool) in ESRI's ArcWeb Public Services. 

So try it out.  Some things to remember:

• This only works on mapservices that have defined a projection in their mapservice (currently 278,769 layers!);
• The envelope search returned by your geographic search is queried against the envelopes in Mapdex (intersection);
• Mapservices often have exaggerated envelopes defined;
• It is still in development, so watch for bugs!

http://www.mapdex.org/search/dev

A fun search to try is:  "photo or image or color or aerial" in or around your geographic point/area of interest

Cheers,

Jeremy