Argo, the Blog

I’m going to let you in on something that I use all the time, which I’d estimate has saved me hours in the years I’ve been using it. The 7-minute screencast below is my introduction to a tool called YubNub, which has the potential to make many things easier for you, from searching Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed imagery to searching your own sites.

At first, this may seem like a lot to remember. But I use this multiple times a day, and it’s made me a lot faster at using the Web.

Here’s a link to instructions on how to install YubNub in your browser. Below the break, my 10 favorite YubNub commands.

1. flcc yourquery – Searches Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed (i.e. publicly reusable) images tagged with “yourquery,” sorted in order of “interestingness” (as determined by Flickr’s secret algorithm). This is my default first stop for finding good images, because the top results really do tend to be awesome.
2. gimcc yourquery – Searches Google for publicly reusable imagery from a variety of sources (Flickr, government sites, Wikimedia Commons). This will likely return more images than the Flickr search, but they won’t be sorted as tastefully.
3. ls yourquery – Searches YubNub for new commands to add to my list. If I find myself searching particular websites in particular ways often enough, I usually try to find a YubNub shortcut to do that more easily.
4. gfl yourquery – Takes you instantly to the first result for yourquery on Google. I use this when I can’t remember the exact URL to a site, but I know a Google search would bring the right site to the top. For example, I can never remember the URL for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, so I’d just type in “gfl pew internet and american life,” instead of taking the extra step of going to Google and doing the search.
5. trans – Translates the page you’re looking at into your language (based on your browser settings).
6. twits yourquery – Searches Twitter for the most recent tweets on yourquery.
7. yt yourquery – Searches YouTube for the most relevant videos on yourquery.
8. gbs yourquery – Searches Google Blog Search for recent posts about yourquery.
9. smkt yourquery – Searches my blog Snarkmarket for posts about yourquery. This is a command I made, and I’ve found it infinitely useful. (I also made one to search my site Newsless.org.) If you’d like to create your very own command to search your own site, look here. (If you can’t figure out how to do it after looking at that page, get in touch with me.)
10. d yourquery – Searches dictionary.reference.com for a definition of yourquery. (Also helpful: ud yourquery, which returns a definition from urbandictionary.com.)

For more popular commands, check out Jeremy’s picks on the YubNub site.