Firefox’s Best Kept Secret
By David Golding
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I’ll admit it: I love Safari. As with many Apple products, it’s just beautiful. I love the Aqua-fied buttons and forms in the main browser window and the sleek metallic look of the interface. With the advent of Firefox, well I have only been so-so in terms of my own personal use. Absolutely ecstatic about PC users adopting it over IE, though. (If you still use IE, goodness, I honestly don’t know what to say…) But as for me making the move over to Firefox, I guess I’ve been just a little slow. My final reason, the one I’ve stood by for so long, was an enhancement made back in the day with Safari Keywords and more recently with Sogudi. This feature became indispensable for me.
Well, I have now made the switch in great measure because of Firefox’s best-kept secret. Right under my nose it was built in all along, just like Safari Keywords and Sogudi.
Seaching is a beast
Searching the web is a beast, and not because of the accessibility. The web is plenty accessible. It’s having to navigate to a bunch of sites to make the searches. I’ve always wanted just one place where I could search them all. For example, if I wanted to search eBay, I’d have to go there, select the search field, type the query and click “Search.” And so on for Wikipedia, Google, Clusty, or whatever.
Firefox actually brings together the search power into the browser to search any of these sites right from the browser window. And I’m not talking about the search field in the upper-right corner.
No Mouse
What slows me down considerably is to have to use the mouse. Right now, if you want this capability in Firefox using the search field, you have to install the search plugin, select it, type in the field and hit return. Then it runs the search for you. This would be alright if it weren’t for the fact that you have to use your mouse at least once (usually more).
The best-kept secret requires no mouse use, which I find indispensable for my web surfing experience.
The Best-Kept Secret
I’m going to set up an automatic search function in Firefox using bookmarks to run queries through Wikipedia. Here’s what I mean. All I do is type “wiki” and then the query in the URL field, or location box, in the Firefox browser. It will run the search right there without me having to browse to the site, find the search field, and run the query. The beauty is, you can do this for any site. Here’s how.
Open up Firefox and browse to the site of your choice. In my example, I’ll show you how to set up Wikipedia. You’ll find the search box on the homepage of Wikipedia. Run any kind of query through it. I’m running “salad.” It runs the query as “http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad”. So I copy the URL.
Now, in Firefox, go to the menu Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks. Select “New Bookmark” and type in the name whatever you want (e.g. “Wikipedia”). In “Location,” paste the URL from Wikipedia. Now here’s the secret: replace “Salad” with %s. The URL should appear like so:
1 | http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s |
What the “%s” is telling Firefox is that it should replace that with the query.
Last step, pick any kind of keyword. In this case, type “wiki” in the “Keyword” field. You’re done. Go to the standard URL field and type in “wiki salad” and it will search Wikipedia for an entry about salad. Well, you can type “wiki” + space + query for any search string and it will pass that into Wikipedia for you.
Typing “wiki” + “salad” into the URL field in Firefox…
…Runs a search in Wikipedia for “salad”.
This can be applied for any site. Just find out what the URL search string is, and plop that bad boy into the Firefox bookmark, replace the query piece with “%s” and assign a keyword and you’re in business. Here are some pre-configured ones for you:
Preconfigured URLs
wiki
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
vt
http://versiontracker.com/mp/new_search.m?&mode=Quick&search=%s
amazon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dblended%26field-keywords%3D%s
scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search
img
http://images.google.com/images?q=%s&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
sf
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=%s
ebay
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=%s&category0=
Sony Bravia’s Commercials
By David Golding
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I absolutely love Sony’s campaign for their Bravia high-resolution TV screen.
Here’s an awesome example of positioning a product perfectly. Of all the descriptors that define the differences between competing products, “color” hits this market on the bullseye. And Sony is pushing Bravia out in the marketplace as the definitive product for achieving color.
The tag “Like No Other” is much better than their first run of Bravia commericials. My pet peeve is splitting three words by periods for your slogan, which is what they did on round one (e.g. “Like. No. Other.”). I find that rarely does the three-word-split-with-a-period tagline really work. Usually it makes up for a lack of creativity to say it right. Well, in this round of Bravia commercials, they just say “Like No Other.” Good job guys.
By the way, all the paint explosions are real, not computerized. If you don’t believe me, go visit their behind the scenes site.
The Networking Power of LinkedIn Groups
By David Golding
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Today I was discussing some options for a client that was looking for a way to bring together literally hundreds and thousands of alumni from a particular university department. They were sold on the idea of LinkedIn Groups. Here’s why I think it is an ingenious solution for anyone out there looking to bring together their staff, friends, and more.
First of all, LinkedIn is a social networking site like MySpace and Facebook, except it’s designed specifically for business interaction. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really ought to. It’s like super charging your resume with legitimate endorsements and recommendations because it’s completely powered by people you know and trust.
The “six degrees of separation” theory says that we can eventually reach every human being on the planet through a chain that connects all the people we know with all the people they know and on and on. LinkedIn is built on this concept, except only 3 degrees of separation is the maximum. So I create a profile, post my resume to it, and endorse other people. But that’s not all. They can then connect to other people and those folks are now within my network. If I ever wanted to contact any one of them, I could enlist the help of the person I do know to gain the introduction. The whole concept is genius. Business cards squared.
Well, you can also set up, for free, a LinkedIn group. In this case, people with similar backgrounds can link to each other via the group. For example, let’s say I wanted to hook up with old high school friends and acquaintances. I search on LinkedIn, and behold, there’s a group there representing my high school. I put in that I’m an alumnus from said school, and get connected to it. Now I have access to everyone within that same group.
I know what you’re thinking… This concept has been the dream of the internet since its inception. But the good thing about LinkedIn is its structure. You have control through spam because to communicate with others in the network, you have to go through other people. That one added measure is enough of a security function that your email box doesn’t get nailed. And the introductions that are made are always endorsed by someone known to you, or it doesn’t go through.
So, a cheap, wonderful way to establish groups for interested folks out there is through LinkedIn. I love to add my own heartfelt endorsement of what LinkedIn is doing for the business world.
