Filed under: Productivity, Tips and tricks, Internet Tools
Quicksilver + YubNub: one search to rule them all
Over at LifeClever, Chanpory has a post about integrating Quicksilver and YubNub, a kind of web search aggregator with a built-in "command line" parser. If you go to YubNub.org, you can enter searches by entering an abbreviation and then the search phrase (there are apparently over 10,000 existing search shortcuts, and you can even add your own). So a search for "TUAW" on google becomes: g TUAW. Similarly, a wikipedia search starts "wp," an IMDB search starts (wait for it), "imdb", dictionary.com with "d," and so on. Using the Web Search Module Plugin it becomes really easy to add this search aggregator to Quicksilver. Just create a bookmark in your default browser that points to: http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=***
You should now be able to use the standard Quicksilver web searching model to access YubDub (with the Web Search Module installed Quicksilver will automatically substitute the contents of the text field for the *** and open the URL in your browser). LifeClever has the complete instructions. One really neat thing is you can do multiple searches in one line, e.g. mash Apple g wp will open both a Google and a Wikipedia search on 'Apple' in separate frames of a single browser window.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sovok said 11:07AM on 4-24-2007
There's also the Sogudi-Plugin, which does the same, albeit locally (if you have the Sogudi Safari plugin installed).
-> http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/sogudi
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JBarnes said 11:40AM on 4-24-2007
While it hasnt been implemented yet in 2.0 betas, shiira's 1.2.3 does the same wonderfully. Endless abilities....weather, academic journals, google scholar, images... all just in the location bar.
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Jono said 11:58AM on 4-24-2007
You can do this already without yubnub.
I already type sg for search Google, si for search Google images etc. Just set up web searches from the web search plugin, or manually from here http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/web_search_list
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william Buckley said 12:16PM on 4-24-2007
The yubnub functionality has been in launchbar for a couple of years now. For some reason Launchbar does not get the recognition on this side of the pond.
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Justin said 2:06PM on 4-24-2007
To throw my hat into the "my favorite app already does this" ring, OmniWeb has had this ability for as long as I can remember. I type "goo tuaw" and it'll pull up stuff about tuaw, or "goof tuaw" and it'll go directly to tuaw.
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Samuel Oltz said 12:29PM on 4-24-2007
The url link for your bookmark is qss-http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=***
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Chanpory said 1:00PM on 4-24-2007
The browser plug-ins are great. But the great thing is about the Quicksilver + Yubnub combo is you don't have to first be in a browser to initiate the search. You could be anywhere in the system and call up the window.
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rebbybrarbs said 2:38PM on 4-24-2007
This is great! I've been toying with the idea of using Shiira to test it out, but I constantly do searches in Safari with "g " in the address bar. Now I don't have to.
Rock on.
--rebby
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Rich said 3:16PM on 4-26-2007
Sure, I could just type a Google search (or other search) into the search bar in Firefox... but to do that I'd have to position the cursor in the search field, click, then type. With this, it looks like I can just tap the QS hotkeys & start searching. For me, that's easier. Maybe for others, moving the mouse & clicking would be easier...
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