eugene gordin

One of my favorite applications for Safari is Inquisitor. It was this program, along with SafariBlock, that made my transition to Safari from Firefox easiest.

Those of you who have used Firefox will recognize the idea behind Inquisitor. And those that have used Apple’s built in Spotlight will immediately recognize Inquisitor. In fact, Inquisitor’s tagline is: Spotlight for the web.

That’s useful and great, but what I love about Inquisitor is that it extends Safari’s search capability by letting you search not only Google (which is standard in Safari), but pretty much any site that has search capability. Let me show you what I mean. Let’s say I wanted to search for Time Capsule (because I’m getting mine today).

With Safari by itself, I would type it into the search box and press return for my results. But with Inquisitor, not only does it autocomplete as I type, it also begins to list search results automatically for me. And if that wasn’t enough, it lets me search Google, Wikipedia, Google Blog Search, and anything else that I have it set to search – just with the click of a button!

This is a great little feature and I use it all the time. And adding a new place to search couldn’t be easier:

• Go into Safari’s preferences, and click on Inquisitor
• Check the “Display Additional Search Engines” box and click “Edit Sites”
• In the window that opens, either choose from on of the many sites built in, or choose “New custom search shortcut” from the little + arrow in the bottom left corner.
• If you’re adding a custom one, all you have to do is replace the query with %@.

I have listed some examples below from the ones I use:

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%@
• Hype Machine: http://hypem.com/search/%@/1/
• Gmail: http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/%@
• Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/?q=%@
• Google Blog Search: http://google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=%@

Right now I find myself aboard Flight 763 to Las Vegas, and the only word I can muster at this point (other than those that I’m typing, of course) is: amazing. The cabin of the plane looks like nothing short of a classy nightclub, backlit with blacklights and soothing lavender neon. The divider between first class and coach isn’t a trendy curtain that the flight attendants censoriously shut, but a transparent purple plexiglass enclosure that seems to just be some sort of soon-to-be fishtank they’d fill if only the FAA would let them bring liquids onboard.

• The ability to instant message not only seat to seat, but also in chat rooms, either with the entire flight, a select group of passengers, or specific to a TV channel (in split window with the channel itself). Unreal. So cool.
• The ability to make playlists from the offered music catalog – wow. I guess it helps when you own your own large record company.
• Electrical outlets at every seat: simple, necessary, well done.
• The food is ordered from the Eat menu on your screen – choose from drinks, snacks, or entire meals, all with one swipe of your credit card along the top of the screen. The flight attendant comes right over and serves you your order.

I found it especially interesting that the options for email checking, shopping, reading (of news), and instant messaging were all already built into the system, just waiting to be enabled (although it was quite sad to see those options, but to not be able to use them). How I long for the days of in-cabin wireless internet. The future of air travel is a bright one.

What can I really say except that the entire flight was, well, an experience. That, and I paid full price for my ticket: a whopping $44.