Google and Big Brother

I’m often asked why I think so much of
Quicksilver, and why it’s always part of my pitch when I’m trying to get someone to
move to
OS X. The reasons are legion, but if I had to pick one it’d be how I use
Quicksliver to perform web searches. I show how I use them here in this
short screencast.

As the title suggests, I use a combination of Quicksilver and Quicksearches.
You need two things to get started:

1. A number of Quicksearches in Safari

2. Quicksilver’s Safari plugin enabled

From there you simply invoke your searches from Quicksilver by typing the
name of the Quicksearch bookmark (see the video). I name all of mine “$SITE
Quicksearch” to make it easy. Here are a few suggestions:

• Google

• Amazon

• Wikipedia

• Dictionary

• Thesaurus

• Pronunciations

You can also configure some more interesting searches like these:

• Search your own website by searching Google for site:yoursite.com $TERM

• Search your Google or Delicious bookmarks

• Search Twitter (the most current of current news on a topic)

If you’re an OS X user and you’re not using Quicksilver Quicksearches, you
should strongly consider incorporating them into your system. ::