this is powered entirely by ‘tumblr‘, one of the easiest and (just recently updated) slick-looking tumble-log interfaces I’ve come across. Not only will it import any feeds from your Twitter, or blog, it also works seamlessly with Google Reader’s Shared Items (see the post on Google Reader if you missed it).

This is an easy way to keep track of items of interest, and share them in a larger space. It’s also a great ‘lazy blogger’ tool. Do you have friends (or family) who send you endless ‘FWD:’ emails? Random pictures or embedded youtube clips on your myspace? Instead of putting them in your ‘almost spam’ folder, try recommending a tumble-log instead. I’m fairly sure tumblr is a perfect tool for them, free, easy, and it makes your junk look half-presentable.

Download Firefox or please check out a number of alternative browsers, a second favourite of mine is Opera.

There are pros and cons to any browser. Firefox is infinitely customizable as there are always new developments for its third-party plugins. Unfortunately, this is also its downfall. In order to get the best experience from Firefox, every new install of it needs countless downloads to get to that specific functionality that you are used to. For a work computer, my mom’s computer or any other that is not used (almost) exclusively by me, I would recommend Opera instead, as it has some advanced functionality pre-installed.

However, for Firefox in particular, let’s talk about a little-known, and entirely built-in function called “Quick Search”.

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If you already use Firefox, right now press Cmd+L (Alt+D on PC) type: “google stanford encyclopedia philosophy” in your address bar, and BAM you have google results without ever going to google’s search.

Firefox has google preinstalled as a command, but you can change any search field you come across to a Quick Search.

Right-click the search field for this site at the top corner of the sidebar and select ‘Add a Keyword for this Search…’

A prompt will come up next that looks as though you’ve added a bookmark, name it Blue and Brown Books, and put the keyword as ‘bbb’ like so:

You’ve now saved ‘bbb’ as a Quick Search. Hit Cmd+L (Alt+D on PC) and type “bbb wittgenstein” and BAM you’ve now immediately gone to the search results for the archives on anything that has the word ‘wittgenstein’ in its content.

You can imagine the power of this simple action. Since finding out about this, I’ve put ‘def’ to search dictionary.com, ‘thes’ to search thesaurus.com, ‘wiki’ to search any wikipedia article, ‘imdb’ to search the imdb database, flickr, ebay, etc. The coolest one is ‘maps’ for google maps.

Take a few minutes to surf to all of your frequented sites and really think of some simple and useful keywords for your searches. If you need to find any of them to edit, they all save to the default ‘bookmarks’ folder.

How many times have you wanted to search for… “Grok” on Wikipedia, but found it frustrating to open a new tab, type in the wikipedia URL, wait for it to load, and then type in the “Grok” and wait for your results to come up? It has happened to me many many times. It might not seem like a lot of time, but if you can truly adapt this to the way you think (or ‘Grok’) about using the internet, it just makes sense. Also, I don’t really know why, but I think it’s really cool to find minuscule ways to make my life better in these kind of extremely small and superfluous increments.
Taking now what we know about Firefox’s Quick Searches, and the basic ‘launcher’ notion of Quicksilver, I’ll talk about how to skip the middle-man and use the Quick Search functionality from anywhere at any time with the Quicksilver plugin, and elaborate on these plugins themselves. Grok on!

If you are a Mac user, and find the built in Spotlight functionality useful, you might want to consider the similar, yet infinitely more powerful application Quicksilver. Not only is it able to find, move and get deep inside items and applications by proxy (without ever having opening that item or application) it also looks a lot prettier!

Quicksilver is not for the light at heart. Your grandmother or mother is not going to be using this in its advanced forms. The concept of this app is that it makes it possible to do away with the ‘folder’ hierarchy of data management. Think of it as Google’ing your entire life (at first).

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It is extremely important to point out that you should not be scared by the Quicksilver. Accept the Quicksilver, it is your friend. Install it, and if nothing else, use it as a shortcut for opening applications, or like a spotlight replacement. It may take some time, but once you understand how this application works, you’ll use more and more of its branches as you go. Honestly, it had taken me about six months before exploring further ’skins of the onion’.

Aaron’s Introduction to Quicksilver:

Step 1: Download Quicksilve: http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Step 2: Turn-off the keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight (from the pref. panel, just click both of them off)

Step 3: In Quicksilver’s Preferences, change the ‘Command’ section’s hotkey to Cmd+Spacebar

Step 4: Make a point to, instead of searching manually through the Finder for your documents or even moving your mouse to the dock for your applications, Cmd+Spacebar and start typing its name, or file extension or anything you can remember about that object.

If you’re like me, you have about eighty folders labeled ‘junk’ or ’school’, each of them have multiple papers, music etc. It used to actually bother me that these junk folders were so unorganized… consider that superfluous. Type, and find, immediately.

If you are familiar with Quicksilver up to this point, please keep an eye on the ‘apps’ section, as there will be more Quicksilver goodness elaborated upon soon.