Yahoo Search Monkey

There is a new way to search and it's called Search Monkey. Yahoo introduced us to this new phenomena last May and has been adding to it since then.

Using SearchMonkey, developers and site owners can use structured data to make Yahoo! Search results more useful and visually appealing, and drive more relevant traffic to their sites.

How does it work?

The SearchMonkey developer tool helps you find and construct data services that you can use to build apps. Once you've built your app, you can use it yourself and share it with others.

Yahoo Tells Us How to Getting Started

1. Visit the Developer overview or Site Owner overview to learn more about participating in SearchMonkey
2. Browse the SearchMonkey Guide to learn what it takes to build a SearchMonkey app
3. Start building your data service or app using the SearchMonkey developer tool

Yahoo Search Gallery

Yahoo! Search Gallery showcases all of the useful SearchMonkey applications that have been built by developers, site owners and Yahoo!. Yelp, Yahoo! Local and LinkedIn Enhanced Results will automatically appear in the search results, eliminating the need for users to go into the Search Gallery to add them.

Yahoo! Search Gallery allows users and developers to visit the Search Gallery by clicking the "Customize" dropdown from the search results page. Developers and site owners can sharing applications by adding links to their app's page on their sites.

Once inside the Gallery, users can view and add apps built on the SearchMonkey platform by developers, site owners and Yahoo!.

The Gallery is still in beta, but there are already a number of really useful apps included. Yahoo expects the number and variety of apps to grow significantly with time. In the meantime, here is an example created by the developer community:

One third party developer, Marco Vitanza, designed this Infobar, which annotates blogspot.com search results with links to the 10 most recent posts from the corresponding blog.

Check out more apps at the gallery. Visit Search Monkey

Cool Firefox Addons

Firefox in itself is a popular browser and with good reason. There are plenty of addons to make it even better.

Splash!

by Mel Reyes (aka: mrtech), slyfox

Adds a splash screen to most Mozilla and Mozilla Based products. Supports sound, opacity, CSS customization, custom images, and much more. You can add {appVersion}, {buildID} and {userAgent} to the loading text and it will be filled in for you.

Interclue

by The Interclue Team

Ever wanted to know what was behind the link before you clicked? Interclue tells you everything you need to know before you open yet another tab.

Add to Firefox

Flashblock

Flashblock is an absolute must-have for blocking Flash advertisements, auto-starting videos or annoying games. Using Flashblock will help you retain more of your memory and some of your sanity while browsing the interwebs. It has a white list as you can see below and requires Javascript to be enabled.

FREE FTP!

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

	Download FireFTP 1.0, English (0.5 MB) Learn More Other Languages and Versions

Do you use OpenID ?

OpenID is a service that eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites.

OpenID is open source technology, is not proprietary, and is completely free. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology allowing you to easily transform an existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

You can use your OpenID on any one of a growing number of sites (nearly ten-thousand) which support OpenID. Many blog services, such as Blogger, will allow you to leave comments using your ID.

Here are some places you can visit to see where you can use your OpenID to log in today:

• myOpenID Site Directory
• The OpenID Directory

How to get an OpenID

You may already have one. If you use any of the following services, you already have your own OpenID:

AOL

openid.aol.com/screenname

Blogger

blogname.blogspot.com

Flickr

www.flickr.com/photos/username

LiveDoor

profile.livedoor.com/username

LiveJournal

username.livejournal.com

Orange (France Telecom)

http://openid.orange.fr/

SmugMug

username.smugmug.com

Technorati

technorati.com/people/technorati/username

Vox

member.vox.com

Yahoo

http://openid.yahoo.com

WordPress.com

username.wordpress.com

Well Known & Simple Providers

If you don’t have an OpenID yet, here are a few which are generally recommended by various members of the community. In the end you should choose a Provider from a company which you trust. You can look at a guide comparing provider feature sets.

• 
  ClaimID
  claimID is the free, easy way to manage your online identity with OpenID.
• 
  myOpenID
  Secure, free, hosted OpenID server by JanRain.
• 
  VeriSign’s Personal Identity Provider
  Free OpenID Provider with support for multi-factor authentication.

• 
  myID.net
  Free OpenID Provider with support for groups and Korean language.
• 
  myVidoop
  Free OpenID Provider that eliminates passwords with security features, customization, and browser integration.

All Providers

For a list of more OpenID Providers, check the list on the wiki. We don’t make any guarantees about the providers listed, though most are quite good.

Roll Your Own

Of course, you can always use your own URI, blog URL, website, etc as your OpenID. Delegation is the simplest way to get up and running with OpenID . Sam Ruby wrote a great tutorial. Delegation requires nothing more than an OpenID Provider and some basic HTML.

Yahoo Widgets

Probably the one place that Yahoo shines over anyone else, including Google, is their desktop widgets. I have enjoyed the Yahoo widgets on my desktop for a long time and have never had a problem with them

The Yahoo widget allows you to :

Save time with live updates right on your desktop

• Your favorite info comes to you
• No need to surf around for what you use most

Convenient at-a-glance view keeps your Widgets in line

• Get all of your personalized updates in one place
• Neatly organize your Widgets along any edge of your desktop

Choose from more than 4,000 Widgets. Make it all yours

• The most Widgets available anywhere online… more than 4,000 and growing fast!
• Weather, games, web cams, radio, scoreboards, calendars, mood rings… if you can imagine it, there's a Widget for it!

Speedier than ever

• Dramatic performance improvements make your Widgets even faster
• Uses less computer memory for Widgets, which leaves mo

I have installed a tic-tac-toe board widget that I have assigned different webcams to.

Multicam

Enter and display four or nine webcams of your choice in one Widget. Go into the preferences to enter new image locations.

Clicking an image will enlarge it to fill out the Widget and clicking again with go back to the four or nine camera view. With Webcams all over the world, you can view Central Park, the traffic in D.C. and more, all at the same time. To find webcams, simply type "webcam+location of your choice" in your search engine. TV news channels usually have the best ones if you are interested in cities.