Ambrosia's iSeek

curiousuburb · October 17, 2003 4:34PM

Moki's clever coders have come up with a new tool for OS X

iSeek

it's like the google bar in Safari on steroids (and on the finder bar)

customizable with any search engine (i'm laughing at entries in the Urban Dictionary)

so Apple-like it makes me wonder why it isn't already in Panther.

nice.

bauman · October 17, 2003 5:09PM

Woa... $15? This seems more like a freebie than a shareware item.

Well, I suppose if they are charging for it, it must have taken plenty of man hours to get working, and it does look like a well refined piece of software.

I just don't think I'll be getting it. It just doesn't seem worth the 15 smackers.

cake · October 17, 2003 7:46PM

Besides the $15, the deal breaker for me is that each new search opens in a new window - I hate clutter!

And watching the video of iSeek in action it doesn't appear that you can change the preferences to have it open searches in new tabs.

/on a PeeCee and can't test it myself. Correct me if I'm wrong.

aquatic · October 18, 2003 12:26AM

Yes at $9.99 it would sell better and $5.99 and they would probably even make the most money because it would be so cheap everyone with paypal would buy it. Looks cool! I am sure they will revise it a lot and of course for free to registered users. we love you moki!

moki · October 18, 2003 1:42AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cake

Besides the $15, the deal breaker for me is that each new search opens in a new window - I hate clutter!

Simply go to Safari's Preferences, and tell it to open links from other applications in new tabs, and you'll be good to go

moki · October 18, 2003 1:43AM

BTW, some other cool features iSeek has that may not be as obvious:

-- Spell checking in the iSeek search field (can actually be quite handy also as a scratchpad to get the proper spelling for something)

-- Auto-complete in the search field, so you don't have to retype your common search requests

-- The ability to encode the URL in any encoding system, so that iSeek works great for Japanese, Chinese, or any language for that matter (and is localized for Japanese out of the box)

-- You can share iSeek search sites you create by simply copying the iSeek URL (from Preferences->Search Sites) and giving it to someone who has iSeek, via IM, web board, or email. All they have to do to add the search site is click on it -- no messy exchanging of files

The latter feature should make it incredibly easy for iSeek search sites to promiscuously spread

For instance, let's say someone made a nice search site for MTV, they could just do this:

Hey, check out this new iSeek search site for MTV! and if you're running iSeek, all you have to do is click on that URL and it's added for you. No fuss, no muss.

The same thing can be done via email or IM, too.

cake · October 18, 2003 5:37AM

Quote:

Originally posted by moki

Simply go to Safari's Preferences, and tell it to open links from other applications in new tabs, and you'll be good to go

Cool. Thanks moki.

I'll give it a try on my little PB.

moki · October 18, 2003 11:55AM

hehe -- here is an interesting but fairly useless iSeek URL:

AT&T Text to Speech

cylon · October 19, 2003 8:29AM

Quote:

Originally posted by moki

Simply go to Safari's Preferences, and tell it to open links from other applications in new tabs, and you'll be good to go

Is there a secret to get that option? My preferences in Safari only gives you the option of opening in a new window or opening in the current window.

moki · October 19, 2003 11:23AM

Quote:

Originally posted by cylon

Is there a secret to get that option? My preferences in Safari only gives you the option of opening in a new window or opening in the current window.

Sorry, change it to "Current window" -- and if you have tabbed browsing on, Safari opens these external links in new windows.

moki · October 19, 2003 11:44AM

One important thing to remember about iSeek is that it is flexible. You can form the iSeek URLs any way you like, and URLs are a very powerful data type that are not limited to HTTP://

For instance, I just added an iSeek URL to log me into one of our AppleShare servers. AppleShare URLs look like this:

afp://USER:PASSWORD@HOSTNAME.DOMAIN/

So for iSeek, in the Prefix field, I put: afp://andrew: -- then in the suffix field, I put @woof.AmbrosiaSW.com/ -- and now all I have to do to log into that AppleShare server is select it from the iSeek menu, and enter my password in the iSeek search field.

Similar things can be done with other protocols, such as ftp, or any URL, for that matter...

bauman · October 19, 2003 6:34PM

OK... I'll take back my overly critical review.

DAMN. That's powerful

I'm really impressed moki. You've taken the ordinary search bar and made it uniquely versatile. That's really amazing.

I may actually consider ponying up the 15 bucks for something like that.

johnq · October 19, 2003 6:43PM

Quote:

Originally posted by moki

So for iSeek, in the Prefix field, I put: afp://andrew: -- then in the suffix field, I put @woof.AmbrosiaSW.com/ -- and now all I have to do to log into that AppleShare server is select it from the iSeek menu, and enter my password in the iSeek search field.

Right but unfortunately iSeek won't obscure passwords using bullets.

They need a token that we can insert into the URL to let iSeek know to mask the password. I mean if the Prefix URL needs to have a password, it should let us insert a special tag, like:

ftp://ftpaddress:<password>

So then iSeek would only show bullets.

Granted, since iSeek is merely throwing the data to Safari (in my case), you'll see the password in the url anyway. Is there a way to do something like transmit:// or fetch://....?

But for passwords in general, this password obscuring ability would be nice.

johnq · October 19, 2003 6:48PM

One more thing,

What I love is that I can now turn off the Google bar in Safari. It's great to have it, of course, but until it has the same versatiliaty as iSeek, I can reclaim my lost URL address space by turning it off. I typically need to see long URLs in development. And I was always torn between keeping the Google bar on or off, half the time using it constantly.

moki · October 20, 2003 12:08AM

Quote:

Originally posted by bauman

DAMN. That's powerful

Yeah it works with ssh, or any other URL too (mailto, whatever) -- if you don't want to send the password via cleartext, just leave it empty in the iSeek URL and you'll be prompted for it by the Finder.

ryaxnb · October 20, 2003 12:34AM

Quote:

Originally posted by moki

Yeah it works with ssh, or any other URL too (mailto, whatever) -- if you don't want to send the password via cleartext, just leave it empty in the iSeek URL and you'll be prompted for it by the Finder.

Uh moki... update your sig... iSeek isn't coming, it has came!

hmurchison · October 20, 2003 12:46AM

Moki,

The biggest challenge you face right now is easily conveying these features to people. What you've mentioned hear makes me now believe the app is worth $15. Maybe more but the power of this app will not hit "most" people until they've had someone sit down and show them. Lookin' good!

moki · October 20, 2003 1:08AM

Quote:

Originally posted by hmurchison

The biggest challenge you face right now is easily conveying these features to people. What you've mentioned hear makes me now believe the app is worth $15. Maybe more but the power of this app will not hit "most" people until they've had someone sit down and show them. Lookin' good!

I agree with you. Fortunately, people can download it and try it out for themselves, with little or no hassle, and decide for themselves. iSeek really is quite handy once you've used it for a bit.

sanity assassin · October 20, 2003 7:11AM

I've been trying it out a lot and really like it, the fact that it is really customisable is the killer for me. I'll be buying it as soon as.

Good stuff.

kcmac · October 20, 2003 3:10PM

For the most part I like it.

I had never used the urban dictionary site so that was a hoot. It is nice that you can get to a search from any window. I like the small icon in the menubar better than the bigger search blank area.

The categorized drop down lists don't appeal to me. Stuff seems hidden this way. I spend time looking for the sites. Is there a method of making all of the sites I don't want to be in these lists posted in an easy to see fashion like Google, Thesaurus, etc? (I know this is still faster than clicking on safari, clicking on a bookmark listing and then searching for the site.) I'm sorry I don't have the solution to this so I feel uneasy about the complaint. :-(

Beyond that, if the price was less, I would be more interested. Maybe after 30 days I will change my mind but my gut tells me not.

moki · October 20, 2003 5:27PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kcmac

The categorized drop down lists don't appeal to me. Stuff seems hidden this way. I spend time looking for the sites. Is there a method of making all of the sites I don't want to be in these lists posted in an easy to see fashion like Google, Thesaurus, etc? (I know this is still faster than clicking on safari, clicking on a bookmark listing and then searching for the site.) I'm sorry I don't have the solution to this so I feel uneasy about the complaint. :-(

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean, but yes, you can re-arrange the menu in any manner you choose, and make any categories be listed either right in the menu, or via sub-menu.

Just go to Preferences, then click on the category in question, and click Edit.

Ambrosia's iSeek

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