Russell put me on to the new google deskbar and at first i thought “yeah it’s cool, but it’s not that much different to the internet explorer google toolbar. But after installing it and playing with it a while I think it revolutionises the way I do my searches. I often do amazon.com, imdb.com and allmusic.com searches, which involves opening my browser, surfing to the website and then typing in my search criteria. Now with the deskbar I have set up shortcuts to these sites and can do quick searches easily. For example, I can type beck in the search box, press ctrl + M (my shortcut key for allmusic.com) and it immediately returns the allmusic result for beck in a small window that I can open to a full window if i want. This is especially good for quick amazon searches to find the ASIN number for things to put in my listening, watching, reading and buying section.
You set it up by going into options, and then substituting the search string with {1}. For example, these are my search strings for the sites listed above:
IMDB
http://imdb.com/Find?for={1}
allmusic
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&opt1=1&sql={1}
amazon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search?mode=blended&keyword={1}
I would love to find out what the tvtome search string is, as it would be my other entry.