Comments on: Very cool tool

By: Jonathan Aquino

Jonathan Aquino — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 05:45:27 +0000

Hi Eszter – Thanks for sharing your experience with YubNub. I hope it will be useful to your readers!

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 12:48:48 +0000

maybe it’s just that i use a broken browser and not that cool one you mention (oh, wait, but i am using firefox!), but every link to that site is treated as an app to download, not a web page…

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 23:08:00 +0000

I think it would be very helpful if there was somwhere online with which you could synchronise you bookmarks and other transportable settings. I’m astonished htat it hasn’t been done. Netscape could do it and give their product a reason to exist.

There are any number of third party apps to do this; Firefox users can use Foxylicious and pull their bookmarks from their del.icio.us bookmarks (or, for the daring with access to a server, run their own installation of Scuttle for that use).

By: theCoach

theCoach — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:26:11 +0000

You may be interested in MSN Desktop search, which does all of that and more from taskbar.

For example, if I type ctrl+shift+D on my computer it sets focus on the task bar. Then if I type “map home to 10 Main Street Anytown, MA, it will bring up Google maps and map the directions from My house to 10 Main Street.
It does this through shortcuts and scripting.
Additionally, you can search the web via MSN Search or Google, or whoever you prefer, or search your local network, assuming you have priveledges. Kind of handy.

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:11:16 +0000

Opera has done this for a couple of years, so far as I remember. I have one search box at the top of th ewindow, which drops down to allow me to search 12 places for the same phrase. And I could do it in a sidebar if I preferred.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:40:38 +0000

By: gzombie

gzombie — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 08:31:30 +0000

Just a comment to say: Wow, that is cool!

By: ArC

ArC — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 06:37:12 +0000

Oh, this is sweet! I was just thinking how I wanted to trim down my search engine plugins for Firefox.

By: Tom Ames

Tom Ames — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:45:46 +0000

Sogudi has done this for Safari for awhile now.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:53:09 +0000

Pablo, tomorrow’s my turn in the barrel.

Chris and Eszter, point taken.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:17:51 +0000

I have added an update to the post noting the reason YubNub was created in the first place: not having to replicate keywords on numerous machines. For anyone who goes online on more than one machine – and in the least who doesn’t ever find themselves using a machine they did not configure at least once in a while? – it is helpful to have this service make site-specific searches so easily accessible.

Plus what Chris Lovell said.

By: Chris Lovell

Chris Lovell — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:05:24 +0000

Some reasons to like YubNub:

1) I didn’t know about the smart keywords feature until I read this post; now that I know about it, it doesn’t seem any more convenient than YubNub.

2) Firefox isn’t the only browser I use. (And I’m not talking about internet explorer, either!) YubNub will be consistent across all browsers, without me having to set up a keyword for every specialized search in every browser I use.

3) YubNub has the potential to do more than searches.

By: SomeCallMeTim

SomeCallMeTim — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:57:56 +0000

I think (I really don’t know) you might be able to build the same in Slick Run, which has the added advantage of being a command line/shortcut line for more than just the Internet. I mention it only because Slick Run is probably my favorite bit of free software.

By: Pablo Stafforini

Pablo Stafforini — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:46:36 +0000

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m making exactly the same point as Steve. His post appeared online when I was writing mine.

By: Pablo Stafforini

Pablo Stafforini — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:44:18 +0000

I’m trying to see how this tool differs from Firefox’s “Smart keywords”. Say you want to search Google images. Type http://www.google.com/images in Firefox’s address bar, right click on the search box, and select “Add a keyword for this search”. Choose a short and memorable keyword like, er, ‘gim’, and voilà!, next time you enter ‘gim Porsche 911’ at the address bar you’ll see the results you would receive if you typed ‘Porsche 911’ in the Google images search box. This is, indeed, a very useful tool. But one that, as far as I can see, the Firefox user can enjoy without installing any additional program or extension.