There is a lot of talk going on about the upcoming release of Windows 7 and personally if I could line up for a pre-order I would. However as much as people are talking about the improvements to the user interface; some like it – some don’t so there’s nothing new there, as well as the improvements under the hood there is one feature I believe that is a knock down killer.
I also predict that once Windows 7 launches you are going to be hearing a lot about this feature called – Search Federated Providers. This feature quite simply brings the power of universal search to your desktop using Explorer.
What is boils down to is a little snippet of code with a file extension of *.osdx and when you double click on that file you have a whole new area of search open to you. At this point I have played with the following search providers
- Twitter Search
- Flickr Search
- Google Blog Search
and those are just the tip of the iceberg folks. The potential for search providers is .. well .. unlimited. If it is on the web and can be searched then chances are some-one will be able to whip up a provider to use in Explorer. Below are screen caps of the three I am currently using (click on graphic for full view)
First up Twitter Search – it only searches your own tweets at this point; or at least that is the provider restriction – other may come out that open this up a bit
Next is the Flickr search and this is where you discover a really cool feature – saving a picture is as simple as drag and drop – from Explorer
Finally we have Google Blog Search
You can find the Twitter Federated Search Provider here which is where you can select to have it restricted just to your name timeline, the everyone timeline as well as how many results to display. The Flickr Federated Search Provider comes to us courtesy of Long Zheng over on his istartedsomething.com site. then finally the Google Blog Search provider is part of a collection you will find over at the Windows SevenForums site where they currently have 16 different Federated Search Providers available for download.
As I said, in these early days of Windows 7 even being available it is great to see what people are already doing with this idea. I can hardly wait until the OS launches and we start seeing some serious work being done with this new feature.
[file kitteh courtesy of LOLcats]
That is awesome Steve, and while I love my Linux, this is a feature that I would love to use. Thanks for uncovering this gem, yet another reason for me to get off my arse and go download Windows 7 from MSDN.
That is awesome Steve, and while I love my Linux, this is a feature that I would love to use. Thanks for uncovering this gem, yet another reason for me to get off my arse and go download Windows 7 from MSDN.
Thanks Steven, this is a post I can use.
Thanks Steven, this is a post I can use.
There's an desktop app that provides better image search capabilities for all windows versions: http://www.ginipic.com.
It searched from all big providers simultaneously and allows drag and drop and many other options.
There's an desktop app that provides better image search capabilities for all windows versions: http://www.ginipic.com.
It searched from all big providers simultaneously and allows drag and drop and many other options.
I saw that mentioned a couple of days ago somewhere and grabbed a copy to install but I don't think it will install on a Win7 machine as it said I didn't have the .NET 3.5 framework installed .. which AFAIK I do. Which is too bad because I really did wantt o give the program a try.
I saw that mentioned a couple of days ago somewhere and grabbed a copy to install but I don't think it will install on a Win7 machine as it said I didn't have the .NET 3.5 framework installed .. which AFAIK I do. Which is too bad because I really did wantt o give the program a try.
[...] in February of this year I wrote over at my other blog, Shooting at Bubbles, that if Windows 7 had one killer feature it had to be its Search, primarily [...]