Vertical LeapVertical Leap sounds like a neat conference and it has a great lineup, I had to decline an offer to attend (sked conflict) but I wish I could go. Here's the skinny:

Search is going Vertical -- vertical search engines are available for local businesses, product & shopping search, travel search, weblog & news search, and search for classified & jobs listings, with more domain-specific search engines debuting every month.

So is Vertical Search just some new hype for Yahoo and Google? Or is there real opportunity for new startups to emerge as domain-killer search engines?

Dave McClure of Simply Hired and Jeff Clavier of SoftTech are program chairs, it's run by SDForum.

PS - Great column by Gary on domain search and online databases here. Gary knows what many of us don't - there's great online access to databases that you might never have thought were available, if you only use...your library. And you don't even need to leave your keyboard to do it.