Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Clusty: less spooky than Google?
"Don't be Evil" is the Google company motto. (And they have some other slogans.) Well, phew, because Google keep track of Everything You've Searched For, Ever. And if you use Gmail they are also looking after All Your Email, Ever. And I wonder if they tie in information about every page that you've ever seen a Google ad in?
- Some people won't even reply to gmail (or googlemail in the UK) email addresses.
- Other people worry about all sorts of things
If those things make you feel a little uneasy Scroogle will make Google searches on your behalf so that you can save your preferences ("100 results per page, please"), and avoid your interests being logged permenantly at Google HQ.
Scroogle themselves recommend Clusty. The search results are good, and the UI is nicely familiar to users of the helpful Drill Down search refinement provided by Active Navigation search products.
My browser, however, is still a big Google fan. In Firefox, I can type to Ctrl-K to start typing in the little search box, and Firefox rushes off to Google to keep them up to date with my interests. Typing www.clusty.com is too much like hard work, so click this link to add Clusty as an option in there: http://clusty.com/toolbar/mozilla.
I'm not sure how to make Clusty my default search engine in Firefox, there is no UI in Firefox to change the default search engine. (They have an agreement with Google). Visiting the URL about:config offers some clues though.
Random fact: The search box in Firefox has a name. It is called Mycroft.
about:config is probably the answer. browser.search.defaultenginename ?
Change the search mode in the address field
By default, if you enter a search term in the address field and press Enter, a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search is performed, and you're taken to the first result of that search directly. If you prefer to see the standard search result list instead, add the following code to your user.js file:
// Change to normal Google search:
user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=");
Of course, you could also change to a completely different search engine by changing the string to something else. The default search string is: "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=".
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