I’m a long-time user of LookOut! (ok, ok – so addict is probably a more accurate description ;^). As I’m sure many of you know, Microsoft bought LookOut last year, and are incorporating that technology into their search efforts. As a result, the LookOut! tool I’m used to is soon to be replaced by the new MSN Search bar. SO – I decided to download and install the MSN Search Toolbar and see how it works. It is safe to say that I’m a relative newbie to search bars – I used the google search bar at one point in time, but I haven’t used it in about 18 months.
Short story is that after a few days, so far I like it – some improvements over LookOut include the ability to preview items that search has found. This really rocks when you have multiple hits that could potentially be what you’re looking for – it’s much faster than having to open each item individually. The other cool feature is the ability to preview Office documents – select an Excel file and you can see the contents, including multiple worksheets – way cool.
On top of all of that – the coolest feature I’ve found is the ability to define custom shortcuts for the desktop search bar. I like to keep my desktop pretty clean – so being able to define shortcuts to apps is great. But the coolest thing I’ve found so far is the ability to define search shortcuts with variables. Case in point: I have a few sites that I either using to search, or searching the contents on a regular basis. Being able to define my own shortcuts with variables greatly improves my efficiency. For example, I search google groups fairly frequently – and that is almost always looking for stuff related to SBS. In the past, I had a favorite entry for the google groups advanced search page, but I’d still have to enter my search string and the groups I wanted to search. Not any more. Now I just type in sbs followed by my search string in the MSN desktop search bar and voila! So what are the search shortcuts I’ve created so far?
@sbs,http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=$w&num=10&scoring=r&hl=en&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_ugroup=*sbs*&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&lr=
&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=15&as_maxm=10&as_maxy=2005&safe=off
@event,http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=$w
@mvp,http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$w+site%3Amsmvps.com&FORM=QBRE
@kb,http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=$w++site%3Asupport.microsoft.com&FORM=QBRE
Obviously, the syntax for creating your own shortcuts for the desktop bar is @ followed by your shortcut text (e.g. ‘sbs’), followed by a comma, which is followed by your URL. To use a variable, insert a dollar sign followed by a w ($w). The MSN desktop bar will replace the $w with whatever you enter after the search shortcut. SO, if I wanted to search any usenet group containing sbs in its name for “SP1”, all I have to enter into my MSN desktop search bar is sbs SP1 pretty cool, huh?
Likewise:
event 1021 searches eventid.net for event 1021,
mvp isa searches msmvps.com for isa, and
kb sbcore searches the Microsoft knowledge base for sbcore
I’ve got some more playing to do – but so far I’m liking the MSN Search Toolbar :^)
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