Googlepedia: my favorite Firefox extension, ever.
I'm a Macintosh user, so for years I have used Safari as my primary browser. Firefox 1.5 was nice but OmniWeb and WebKit, in my opinion, were just faster and better. When Firefox 2.0 was released I decided to give it a shot and play around again. It's a bit faster, although my non-scientific, Steve Jobs '
Boom' test tells me it's still slower. Speed is only part of the browser and Firefox came at me with extensions and better tabbed browsing.
Tabbed browsing and extensions have been with Firefox for a long time, but pair them with the moderate speed improvement and slight polish that Firefox 2.0 brings and we have a possible winner over Safari/WebKit. What's my point in all this? I found an extension called Googlepedia that I think is the best thing since the advent of Google and HDTV. Search for something in Google and with Googlepedia you'll not only get the Google result but the Wikipedia result as well.
So I'm easily amused by extensions, but this one is really, really cool. I do a lot of Google searching and Wiki searching, this extension will give me access to more information much faster than I could have done it before. Kudos to the developer, James Hall. I'm also wondering why no avid technologyevangelist.com reader has added our link to the Wiki Technology Evangelist page... Hmmmmm.
Interesting extension you've found there, Mr. Higginbotham. Personally, I take a slightly different approach to searching these two popular sites. I set my Firefox search box to Wikipedia and run Google searches using a Google Toolbar.
Yes, but think of how much time you could save with this extension! No more double typing, it's just one search away for all the deets you could ever want!!!!!!!!!!
I'll give it a try. But I think I know when I'm looking for a wikipedia style answer and when I'm looking for something else, so don't entirely see the benefit.
It's more of a 'find as much useful information at once' tool. Sometimes when I Google something I don't even think to Wiki it, and now I have all that cool info right there. I have seen a lot of great info that I otherwise would have passed over had I not installed this plugin. It does not need to replace the Wiki search itself, but it sure does add to the unused whitespace on Google's search results with little to no impact on performance. Just another niceity.
1. Posted by: True_Job on November 6, 2006 1:46 PM:
Googlepedia shows you a relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results. Clicking links in the article will trigger new Google searches, making it a very useful research tool. It's the best ad-on they could ever come up with!