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Use Quix to make advanced searches easier
Google may be the best search engine available today, but it has several frustrations to me. One of the biggest is that it routinely forgets my preferred search settings. At best, Google only remembers your preferences when you are logged in, but personally i find that Google forgets my preferences all of the time, even when logged in. I finally figured out a way to avoid that frustration plus limit my Google searches to recent pages, regardless of whether I am logged in. The key was to use Quix. I've written about Quix before but as a quick recap: Quix is a bookmarklet that lets you easily add/change shortcuts by editing a plain text file. I host my plain text file in my public Dropbox folder, so I can edit the file on any of my computers and know that it will be instantly updated on all my computers (including my iPhone and iPad) in minutes. Read on for the specifics...
Quix makes bookmarklets even easier to use
Bookmarklets are one of my favorite things. I have an entire folder of them in my Safari Bookmark Bar for Instapaper and Readability and bit.ly and Pukka and Tumblr and ... well, you get the idea. They're incredibly handy for doing "something" with the current webpage that you are viewing, or quickly looking up other information. Quix has come up with a way to make them even better. It calls itself "Your Bookmarklets, On Steroids" and it's hard to argue with that description. Imagine all of your bookmarklets together in one, and being able to come up with shortcuts to trigger each one. The interface is extremely minimal: a javascript popup window with a text input space. What you type in that space dictates what happens next. Quix comes with a bunch of commands already built-in, and using them is a breeze. The syntax couldn't be simpler: just type a command shortcut (such as "imdb") followed by a word or words (like "ghostbusters" or "raiders of the lost ark"), then press Return. As Jeff Goldblum used to say "There's no step three." Some of the other built-in commands: Search IMDB: "imdb search word(s)" Search Google: "g search word(s)" Search Google Images: "img search word(s)" Search Wikipedia: "w search word(s)" Search only the current site using Google: "gs search word(s)" Reformat the current page using Readability: "read" Share on Tumblr: "tumblr" Share on Facebook: "fb" Share on Delicious: "db" Clip current page in Evernote: "evernote" There are scads more for shortening links, sending the page to other programs like CSSEdit, MarsEdit, Pukka, Tweetie, or many others. and if you don't find the one you want, you can add your own using Quix's easy syntax in a plain text file (Mine is available for anyone who wants to use it.) If you still are not convinced, checkout their two minute video which shows it in action. By the time I finished watching it, I was already sold. Instead of an entire folder of bookmarklets, I have one for Quix, which does everything that I did before, and more. Oh, and one more thing: since this is just javascript, it also works on Mobile Safari on the iPhone. Ever tried to find a specific word on a long page of text in Mobile Safari? It can be a real hassle. With Quix, just type "find search word(s)" and Quix will highlight all instances of the word on the current page and show you the first one. Quix is incredibly handy. Check it out at Quixapp.com.
Test your WoW quotient
tehkittyboy over on the WoW LJ passes along this WoW Purity Test. I'm not usually one for taking these online tests, but considering it had to do with WoW, I went ahead and filled it out. Just like all of these quizzes (in the great tradition of Cosmo quizzes), it's silly, but you end up with a number that you can feel good (or bad?) about. In my case: 35%. Which sounds low, but then again, maybe it's a good thing that I don't have 60 days /played on one character.And if you're after something a little more serious, Curse points us to this slightly more academic gamer psychology test on GuildCafe. It's based on the Bartle Test, a famous test about 10 years old meant to categorize online game players into four different groups: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers. The test was originally created for players of MUDs (if you remember those), but it's now been updated for MMORPG players. According to this test, I am an SAEK, which means I'm more interested in socializing and achieving than finding new places ingame and killing other players. Is that why my WoW Purity score is so low? Who knows.
