1. Dec 20th, 2005

    Yahoo Open Shortcuts

    Yahoo! open shortcuts:

    Open Shortcuts (beta) are custom keywords that take you directly to a site, a search, or start a task right from the search box. In Unix speak: if the search box is the command-line of the web, shortcuts are aliases.

    To use an Open Shortcut, you type ! (exclamation point) followed by the name of the shortcut in the Yahoo! Search box. For example, type: !ebay lamps. This takes you directly to www.ebay.com and searches for lamps.

    To be fair, YubNub introduced the command-line of the web. I love the way I can search an image with gim, or Wikipedia with wiki. And Firefox already has a built-in shortcut feature, but not one that’s as easy to use. So now the question is, do I go for defining my own shortcuts for the things I want to do, or do I use the YubNub community model.

    To quote LifeHacker, “Open Shortcuts might just be the thing that turns that blue G up in my Firefox search bar to a red Y permanently.”

    You heard it here first: 2006 might be the year when I take my searches back to Yahoo.

    Printable PDF | Posted by Assaf Filed in general 3 Comments »

    1. Dec 23rd, 2005

      Jonathan Aquino

      Hi Labnotes – You can also combine the two: y !ebay lamps

    2. Dec 23rd, 2005

      Assaf

      good point. thanks!

    3. Dec 26th, 2005

      Shantanu Oak

      >> So now the question is, do I go for defining my own shortcuts
      >> for the things I want to do,
      >> or do I use the YubNub community model.

      The maximum number of Open Shortcuts is 30. But with yubnub, you can store and use hundreds of commands. Use Yahoo shortcuts for personal bookmarks and private applications. You can store not only web addresses but also text blocks. for e.g.

      !set memo Any balance not paid by the payment deadline will be assessed a 1.5% late payment fee on January 4 and monthly thereafter. The assessment of late fees is also applicable to deferred balances.

      Maximum length for the shortcut definition is 2048 characters

      so my advice will be to install yubnub shortcut first.
      http://tinyurl.com/dyutk
      And then access all the yubnub commands from yahoo.

      Add personal bookmarks, phone numbers, notes using Yahoo shortcuts (keep in mind the limit of 30 shortcuts)

      >> To quote LifeHacker, Open Shortcuts might just be
      >> the thing that turns that blue G up in my Firefox search bar
      >> to a red Y permanently.

      Agreed. :)

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