Library clips

When I write blog posts I’m constantly surfing around for links to include, a lot of the time these are my own past posts.

I can search on my blog using blogbar or Swicki, but I might not have my blog open, so what I have been doing is clicking a link on my links bar that goes straight to my latest blog posts in Google Blog Search eg. blogurl:http://libraryclips.blogsome.com, then I do my search.
I have the same link for Technorati (use the search this blog box) and also Swicki. But this still requires me to open a page first, before I can do the search.

Well not anymore, today I was playing around with the Google Toolbar 4 and noticed if you right-click in the search box of a webpage you can “Generate a Custom Search Engine“, meaning I can add it to the Google Toolbar. I suppose you could do the same thing with the Copernic Toolbar.

Swicki

So I went straight to my Swicki for my blog and did so, as a result it added a Swicki button to my toolbar. But I already have one of these buttons on my links bar (in the options you can disable this in the toolbar or leave it and delete the link in your links bar instead). Anyway when you look in the drop down menu to the left of the Google Toobar search box, you can select Swicki and just enter a search term…awesome I can search my blog from the Google toolbar.

If you want you can add it to the gallery, you can even add a button to the toolbar that does a little more by showing the latest posts (basically) a branded RSS feed button for your blog for the Google toolbar. If you make one you can share it in the gallery, this is another way to promote your blog feed. I guess you can do this at the many widget services to promote your blog feed eg. Google RSS Widgets.

Anyway I have reached a hiccup, when I right-click, to copy shortcut on a hit in the search results in Swicki, the URL is this:

http://swicki.eurekster.com/redir?p=R&srid=E3&lbc=swicki&w=blogbar&url=http%3a%2f%2flibraryclips%2eblogsome%2ecom%2f2005%2f12%2f01%2fblogbar%2dsearch%2dfrom%2dyour%2dblog%2f&rk=1&uid=290643887&sid=11&ts=ej&rsc=o83MM7FFKTbBfCD:&ccode=au&tit=Library%20clips%20%3a%3a%20Blogbar%3a%20search%20from%20your%20blog%20%3a%3a%20December%20%3a%3a%20200&omkt=au&egid=e1a7437f-59e0-4e6d-85d0-ebb3f7fc0bca

instead of this:

http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2005/12/01/blogbar-search-from-your-blog/

It doesn’t matter, but I just want a quicker launch when someone clicks on the link from one of my blog posts.

So what I have to do is click the link till the URL re-directs and copy shortcut the link (you can grab it before the page loads).

Technorati

This doesn’t work with Technorati, I went to my homepage at Technorati, and in the “Search this blog” box I right-clicked and added the custom engine. But when I go to use it I get a 500 Internal Server Error.

Google Blog Search

Just like adding Swicki as a custom engine I can also do this with Google Blog Search, the only thing is that I can’t add Google Blog Search with my blog URL already in the search box, like I can bookmark in the Links bar….darn.

But I really impressed myself, I found this old blog post of mine with a search box that allows me to search my blog at Google Blog Search.
I right-clicked in this search box and it added successfully to the toolbar, and when I used it, it worked

…so now I can site search my blog at Google Blog Search without having to use the Google Toolbar site search icon, ie. I don’t have to have my blog home page in the browser to do a site search, I might as well use the search box on my blog sidebar if that’s the case.

In a nutshell

BEFORE - I saved a site search of my blog at Google Blog Search and added it to the links bar, to search in my blog, I had to click the link, then when the page loads perform the search.

NOW - From within the Google Toolbar I can search my blog directly, the webpage I’m on when I do this search can be any webpage it doesn’t matter.
All I do is select my blog from the drop down menu, enter a search term and hit “Go”.

Here’s the search box, try it for yourself, right-click in it to add it to the Google Toolbar, then choose it from the drop down menu in Google Toolbar and hit “go”:

Now you will have a site search for my blog, here’s the code for the search box so you can do one for your blog:

<form method="get" action="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch">
<input type="text" name="as_q" size="19" maxlength="255" value="" />
<input type="hidden" name="bl_url" value="http://libraryclips.blogsome.com" />
<input type="submit" name="btnG" value="Search Library clips" />
</form>

The code is available here as well…here is an alternative search box example.

Rollyo Rollbar

The Rollbar bookmarklet is another option, whatever webpage I’m on I can click the bookmarklet, choose a searchroll from the drop down menu (in this case the searchroll I choose is my blog home page, it has only one URL so I can site search my blog), then enter my search term and go. I wish I could set a default searchroll so I don’t have to choose from the drop down menu.

Google Deskbar

If you use the Google deskbar you can also add webpages to your drop-up menu, so I’ve gone ahead and added Swicki, this is how:

on your Google Deskbar click the little black down arrow, choose options, choose customised searches, click add, give it a name (I chose “libraryclips@swicki), give it a hotkey (I chose “L”), then type in the URL, eg. http://library-clips–swicki.eurekster.com/{1}….you have to add the {1} for it to work.

Now I don’t even need the browser open to search within my blog…awesome.
NOTE: for some reason this is not working in the Google Deskbar on my work computer.

I wish I could do the same again with Google Blog Search but the same problem persists in that my blog URL can’t be pre-filled in the search box.
See at the end of this post for the details of my experimenting…Tony Hirst is usually the tinkerer for hacking stuff like this.

[ADDED 22/01/07: Check out the comment from this post as Tony Hirst has done it again, now I can search in my blog at Google Blog Search from the Google deskbar.

This is my a site search for my blog at Google Blog Search:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flibraryclips.blogsome.com&btnG=Search+Blogs

Here’s how to amend it so you can search within your blog with the Google Deskbar:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&bl_url=http%3A%2F%2Flibraryclips.blogsome.com&ie=UTF-8&q={1}%20blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Flibraryclips.blogsome.com&btnG=Search=Blog

Thanks Tony]

Technorati Tip

Add multiple Technorati tags from your blog, so you can see posts limited to more than one tag.

This is my blog home page at Technorati: http://www.technorati.com/blogs/libraryclips.blogsome.com.
On the left I can choose a tag from my blog tag cloud, if I choose the tag “blogs” this is what the URL looks like:
http://www.technorati.com/tag/blogs?from=http://libraryclips.blogsome.com.

Fair enough, now I can see my blog posts limited to the tag “blogs”, but what if I want to add another tag to this search query, what if I want to search my blog posts that are tagged with “blogs” AND “conversation”, you can’t do this unless you hack the URL.

Here’s how, in the URL after the word “blogs” just add the tag with a plus symbol (+converation), here’s the URL:
http://www.technorati.com/tag/blogs+conversation?from=http://libraryclips.blogsome.com