So today, Jeremy Langhans was on the Recruiting Animal Show and what a time was had!  Somehow the Animal seemed to skip over me in the Sourcing Challenge interviews so I actually gave a call in today and joined Jeremy in discussion along with Amybeth Hale, and Maureen Sharib! 

It's a nice hour long block of fun times and interesting perspectives you'll be glad you listened to!  Another big round for everyone who participated and a big thanks to the Recruiting Animal for having me on the show!

It's not javascript so it's not technically a bookmarklet and it's really only useful so far as I know with firefox... But it's a complication of email strings which you can apply to searches using FireFox Bookmark keywords. 

1. Drag this up to your bookmarks:  Email String
2. Right click on the link if it's in your bar, or open your bookmark organizer, find the bookmark, and right click on it and visit properties.
3. Give it a good name like "Email" and a good keyword, also like "Email" and then click "Ok"
4. Go to your address bar and type in your keyword followed by the domain you want to look up.  Something like this:        "email gmail"  or  "email cisco"
   
5. Enjoy the results =]

It's not perfect by any means, but it will save you some time in the long run until it is perfected =]

Again, this is a FireFox only trick... I think... I haven't tested it with any of the other browsers yet.

Cheers^^

PS: I should have also mentioned, and I apologize now for having not... That the three pieces of the string came from myself, Rob McIntosh, and Rithesh Nair!  You guys rock!

Put your hands together for Jeremy Langhans everyone for completed the 3rd SourceCon Challenge!!  Way to Go!  It's on in the finals!

With all three challengers in place, this should be a really awesome event!  If you're not already registered, go register now!!!
http://www.sourcecon1.com

cheers^^

I came across this today and I think it's one of the best things ever.  You all know Google comes in lots of different languages per country, but this really takes the cake.  Apparently Google also has a version of itself for those hACK3r$ (hackers) who read and write in Leet Speak.  This is just plain awesome, way to go Google! 

Check it out here: http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

51MPly 4M4ZIN9

Today's Thought: I've often heard that Turkey's, despite being clever creatures, are silly enough to look up at the sky when it rains and drown themselves?  I've been wondering if there is any truth to the matter or if anyone has any experience in the subject.  I can't help to imagine a field full of drown turkeys who simply couldn't figure out how to open their umbrellas^^

I've spent some time over the last week playing with a plethora of different search engines and there are a few that have really, and I mean REALLY impressed me. Since every search engine has it's own unique little features it takes a while to really get to know what your options are and in this post I've decided to cover the first of three very unique engines which all have some really FUN features! I'll cover each engine in 3 separate posts so I don't take away from each of them.

The engine I'm most excited about is an engine called Ujiko. It's done by the great people who brought your Kartoo.com and it's got a similar feel as it's also a visual engine.  The engine itself uses the latest in Yahoo! search technology which for me is very nice because I rely so heavily on Google. For all of those familiar with the coop concept, this is a very exciting engine because it embraces a lot of the features, just applied to yahoo in a very neat manor! Now before I break down all of the features, I need to explain something important or else you might not grasp how to make them work or unlock them.

Ujiko is almost like playing a game as you start out with a basic search engine and build it up over time. For every result you visit while using Ujiko you accumulate 1 point. Once you have 10 points you gain a level. When you gain a level, you get access to more and more features each time. Let's have a look at some screen shots


This is Ujiko at Level 0 and in it's most basic form.  Here you can search and edit it's appearance, but not a whole lot of other stuff going on.  Now let's take a look at what it looks like at level 10 which is the equivalent to opening 100 search results that it's brought back for you.


You'll notice that it's added a whole lot more buttons to press and things to try.  It adds a favorite button for bookmarking, lists of saved queries and another list for successful queries in the top left.  It allows you 5 different folders to save links to which can be named and specified right next to those first three buttons.  It also provides links to search Kartoo, Yahoo News, Yahoo Images, and also Yahoo Video on the top right side.  At this point you have two other buttons as well, one which emails you the results and another which allows you to change the skin of Ujiko down in the lower left side!

Now, if this wasn't enough enhancement, let's take a look at what Ujiko looks like at level 20, which is 200 results opened!


Now on the top right side you'll notice one additional button for Wikipedia searches, but also a whole mess of new buttons on the bottom!  Those buttons are the real gems when it comes to Ujiko!  The first button looks like a trash can and is the button to apply or remove the filters you set.  Similar to Google's coop, you can eliminate the pages you don't want to return!  The next two buttons are for "Parental Filters" and "Parental Filters+" and I think that's self-explanatory. 

Now the next 5 buttons are really exquisite!  They allow you to build strings of words you want to apply for either removal or keeper or url, or domain, etc...  They're all very versatile in their capabilities and let you create the comparison of Google's coop refinements!  Pretty sweet huh? 

All this aside, the interface is really amazing as it will build you keywords and color code them into groups which connect to the results.  It will also show you how many times you've visited the link with a little number in a while bubble next to the result.  It can even change the summaries that you see for the sites so you can notarize them however you'd like! 

Now, just when you thought you had everything you could want in a search engine, Ujiko goes a few steps further.  Not only can you skin the browser, but you can upload and skin it in your own images, it saves your levels and lists in it's cookies, but it also links to Alexa!  Yes, you can check web stats for the results you're looking at, and while you're at it, connect to the WayBack Machine and see older versions!!  By clicking on the little piece of notepaper next to the result you're interested in, this menu will display.



So you've heard all the good stuff about Ujiko, now unfortunately it's time to cover some of it's problems.  There aren't too many issues with the engine and on the whole I really like it a lot, but some of mention include:

1. The design can be a little flakey and shift focus easily making you have to go back and click over and over again.
2. It handles boolean a little funny despite being Yahoo ready, but nothing to really complain about.
3. It uses cookies to store the information as opposed to having a login. 
4. Clicking 200 of it's results to get to the good stuff can be a bit annoying to those who need a good search engine on the fly.  (But then again, anything in this world worth having doesn't come easily).
5. Limited to 12 results at a time.
6. I have no idea what else comes after level 20.  The one I use at work is up to about level 45 or so and I haven't seen any additional changes.
   

All that aside, the engine works great, gets great results, and gives you a lot more customization that any other engine out there short of the coop, but with 10x as many easy to access features!  On the whole I give this search engine a 9.5/10.  Great work to everyone over at Ujiko, I can't wait to see what future Levels Hold! 

Happy Searching^^

Ok, so the other day, the Great Rob McIntosh and I were working on finding the "Holy Grail" of email strings using Google.  We came to some interesting conclusions, but neither of us finalized any solutions.  Today I did some playing with it a bit and here's what happened.

The initial string we were trying to figure out looked something like this:

@gmail.com -http:// -https:// -www email    Results

The weird thing about this string was it actually worked, but what was even weirder was that if you made the keyword "email" into a negation, it worked even better (a wider number of results with a little extra garbage)...

@gmail.com -http:// -https:// -www -email    Results

So I got to thinking today and I realized the obvious as people often do when they take a step back from the trees in order to see the forest in front of them. 

By removing the http:// and the https:// and the www, we were in a sense, screwing ourselves out of a lot results.  Any page containing those values within their text was being eliminated!  Boy I feel silly reflecting now, but heres what I discovered upon this reflection...

*@gmail.com -intext:www.gmail.com   Results

Now, given the fact that the results are fewer than the previous searches, all the garbage has been pulled out.  So take a moment, take a company, possibly your own, and give it a shot.  See what kind of results you find.  Be aware that if the company has subdomains, you can expect them to come up so you might want to include some -inurl statements once you figure out all of their sub domains. 

Happy Searching^^

I've decided that there are far too many questions in this world that I need answers to and so I've opted to start a daily column where I will pose these questions to the public and see what kind of responses I get.  I suppose this is similar to a Yahoo answers, but completely focused on myself and my random thoughts. 

Today's Question:
What would a leprechaun buy if they were able to spend their pot of gold as they wanted to?  Furthermore, why are they so stingy? 

Please post your comments and let me know what you think^^

Last week I completed my AIRS Xtreme Lab training and also the AIRS Fearless Cold Calling class, both of which were taught by the wonderful Kelly Dobbins.  Although the classes didn't go as far as I personally would have liked, I did take quite a bit away from each of them and highly recommend them to anyone who has the time and opportunity to do so!  Kudos again Kelly!

Happy Searching^^