Sir Lewis Hamilton is a Ferrari Grand Prix winner! LFG! 🏎️💨 #F1
One of my hobbies is contributing to Wikipedia, and more so, creating new Wikipedia articles. Citations of reliable sources are key to both good contributions, and new articles, especially in making them stick (not get reverted/deleted).
I use Google News to search for citations, and depending on the topic, sometimes Google Books and Google Scholar.
Unfortunately, to search Google News, you have to first go to Google News (news.google .com - deliberately unlinked here), upon which you are immediately shown distracting (if not dire) news photos, headlines etc. which present a non-trivial challenge to staying focused.
If only there was a way to directly search Google News from your browser search box / address bar (like you can search Wikipedia from your browser).
Unfortunately, there is no site-specific search option for Google News (like there is for YouTube, e.g. see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-engine-firefox#w_add-search-engines) that you can select an add to your browser in one click (enabled by OpenSearch support, link in footer).
This is another technology I use for category 2 (defending focus) that I mentioned in my previous post on focus.
Steps to add a Google News search option to Firefox:
1. open Firefox Preferences ("Firefox" menu, "Preferences" item)
2. select "🔍 Search" from the left column
3. scroll down to "Search Shortcuts"
4. click the "Add" button under the list of search engines which opens a dialog
5. enter "Google News" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://news.google.com/search?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gn" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
The dialog should look like this:
8. click (Add Engine)
Now you can go to your address bar, type in "gn " (without the quotes), your news search term or phrase, e.g. "Broken Arrow Skyrace", and press return to directly see search results.
Similarly for Google Books, follow the same steps except:
5. enter "Google Books" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://books.google.com/books?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gb" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
And similarly for Google Scholar:
5. enter "Google Scholar" into the Search engine name field (without quotes)
6. enter "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s" into the URL field (without quotes)
7. enter "gs" into the Keyword field (without quotes)
Thanks to folks in the #indieweb informal chat who reminded me (when I complained about the distracting Google News home page) of this way to add new site-specific search capabilities to the browser even for sites (or subsites) without explicit OpenSearch support.
Looking forward to using these capabilities to more quickly find citations for updating and creating new Wikipedia articles.
Previously:
* https://tantek.com/2026/158/t2/three-insights-improving-focus
* https://tantek.com/2024/287/t2/setup-search-shortcuts-firefox
OpenSearch FYI:
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XML/Guides/OpenSearch
#focus #Wikipedia #Firefox #GoogleNews #GoogleBooks #GoogleScholar #search #siteSearch #AddSearchEngine #searchEngine #searchEngines #OpenSearch #webSearch #SearchShortcuts #browserTip #FirefoxTip #searchTip
inhales sharply GOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLL THREEEEE! 🇺🇸 ⚽️
Gooooooooooooal!!! 🇺🇸 ⚽️
Liss is More
An Old, Familiar Feeling — Liss is More
I had a not-too-unusual experience with AI yesterday, that had a not-at-all-normal impact.
Indie developer Casey Liss of Accidental Tech Podcast fame recounted his experience using Claude Code on his app, Callsheet. With Claude Code, he was able to fix two bugs that had eluded him for months, and his take on the experience is unique.
I was struck; I was feeling something that was familiar, but distant. I felt like I had just worked together with a coworker to solve a technical problem. It felt like I was part of a team again.
I expect Casey to receive some negative feedback about this, but I totally understand the perspective. It’s okay to perceive a coding agent as an extension of your team. For indie developers, who are often a team of one, having an agent to bounce ideas off of, to experiment with, and to debug/fix code with is incredibly impactful.
I was following James’ Search engine shortcuts in Firefox which was very helpful, though I was not seeing this part of step 5 in Firefox on Windows:
“Click the icon of the site in the ‘This time, search with:’ bar. If you haven’t already added the site as a search engine, a small green + icon should appear indicating you can add the site as a search engine.”
I knew that indieweb.org advertised OpenSearch, so I thought there should be a way the browser picks up on that. I found that right-clicking in the address bar gave me the option Add “IndieWeb (en)”.
That worked and the search now shows up under Settings > Search Shortcuts. However, it appears that the edit option is disabled, which seems like it might be a bug. That prevents me from adding a search shortcut like @iw unless I manually add the search engine.
