DEVONtechnologies (http://www.devon-technologies.com) has released DEVONAgent Express on the Mac App Store. It requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 and costs US$$4.99.

DEVONagent Express, the latest Mac product from DEVONtechnologies, makes the search technology behind DEVONagent available from any app on the Mac and is easy-to-use, says Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, president of DEVONtechnologies. Just like Spotlight searches the computer DEVONagent Express searches the web and presents the results directly in its menu.

DEVONagent Express adds a menu to the right hand side of the menu bar that lets the user choose the best search engine for the job, then type a query, and run the search. The app comes with more than 80 pre-fab plug-ins that let it talk to the earch engines and services that people use every day: Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, the App Store, and many, many more.

All results are collected and presented directly in the menu, can be previewed when hovering with the mouse over them, dragged to other applications, and opened in the default web browser or in the background. Large thumbnail previews give a first impression of all pages.

All the advanced search operators known from DEVONagent and DEVONthink can be used in Agent mode, too, says Böhnisch-Volkmann. A faster Express mode directly collects the results from the search engines and presents the results unfiltered. In Agent mode DEVONagent Express also downloads all result pages, filters them, re-ranks them, and presents long text summaries in the pop-overs and, optionally, in the menu.