Well it seems the cat’s out of the bag. Sphere, the new blog search engine, has launched after being in beta for a few months. I was going to wait to post, but at least two big bloggers have already mentioned it.

It returns relevant results, and it just works. You can even refine searches by date using the “custom range” feature. You can find Related Media which includes photos, books, podcasts, and news. But the feature I like the most is the “Sphere It!” bookmarklet that lets you find blog posts that are related to the site you are currently viewing. It works extremely well so far.

It’s a shame that people posted about the launch before the small team behind Sphere could be awake to solve any problems that may occur. It was more of a common courtesy thing, which no longer matters since the cat is out of the bag and doesn’t want to go back in.