Search Business Hacks for Archived Posts
Looking for an old post about PowerPoint, improving your productivity, working from home, or the best business apps for the iPhone? It's easy to get the goods every day via the Web site, RSS feed, Twitter, or newsletter -- but none of those options make it super-easy to find an old post about something you just happen to be interested in right now.
Of course, you can always use the search box at the top of the Web page, to the right of the BNET logo, but that searches the entire site, not just Business Hacks. Is there a solution for the BizHacks fan? There sure is... if you use Windows 7.
All you need to do is create a search connector for Business Hacks. I told you about search connectors last year, but didn't point out the obvious: That you can add one to your own PC to do targeted searches just for Business Hacks.
Just copy this code into Notepad:
<?xml version="1.0″ encoding="UTF-8″?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>Business Hacks</ShortName>
<Description>Search Connector for Business Hacks</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://api.search.live.com/rss.aspx?source=web&query={searchTerms} site:blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/&web.count=50″/>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://bing.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site:blogs.bnet.com/businesstips"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
Save the file with an OSDX extension and double click the file. It'll install itself in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer.
Now, just select Business Hacks in your list of favorites and type a search in the search box. And it's also easy to customize this to search any of your other favorite Web sites as well. Check out my older post for details.
Sadly, it's not perfect. In theory, it should give you the same results as entering this in your Web browser:
http://bing.com/results.aspx?q=[SEARCH TERM HERE]+site:blogs.bnet.com/businesstips
...but the search connector is not as thorough for some reason. Nonetheless, it's a handy trick for performing a quick and easy search for older topics.
Hey, readers: Any techie types out there know how to improve this search connector to give the same results as the Bing search I listed above?
