The Journal of an Internet Junkie

One word I would not use to describe Lost‘s 6-year run is “consistent.” The show was a rollercoaster of loose plotlines and mysteries; of false-starts, twists and revelations. There were high points and low points, and while it was thoroughly enjoyable for most of its run, consistency was not one of its strengths. Just look at how the last three seasons compare to the first—with the exception of the characters (which, granted, is a pretty big exception) it’s hardly even the same show. But there were many great episodes, and one thing that could be called consistent was the excellence of the finales. Each of the first five seasons’ finales were some of the show’s highest points, and even the weaker seasons delivered in the finales. With the sixth season, that changed.

Lost’s last episode—the series finale—was a disappointment.

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Illegal File Sharing at Yavapai College is serious business. Screenshot of the Yavapai College Campus Police Tips page.

A couple months ago when I first started using Google Chrome, I wrote a post detailing how to post to Facebook and Twitter from the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox address bars. I noted that “any website that allows posting or sharing through the use of a URL can be rigged this way,” and with Google’s recent release of Buzz and the interest surrounding it, I figured it would be a good time to update my guide to include sharing with Google Buzz. After following these simple steps, you’ll be able to share any link in Google Reader, and therefore Google Buzz, simply by typing your keyword in the address bar of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox (no plugin needed).

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[Jump to the step-by-step guide]

I’ve recently started using Google Chrome as my default browser, and one of the features I like most (which I’ve since discovered can also be enabled in Firefox, using “Quick searches”) is the ability to search any site from the address bar with keywords. Having keywords trigger search engines is much more convenient than a drop-down search menu like the one in Firefox. I now type simply “ref” or “wiki” before my term for commands I use frequently like looking a word up on thesaurus.reference.com or finding a Wikipedia entry, respectively.

It’s also allowed me to replace some of the functionality missing due to the lack of extensions on Chrome for Mac – namely, the reddit Socialite plugin, which makes surfing reddit infinitely easier, and allows me to see if any site on the Internet is on reddit and if not, submit it myself. I couldn’t do either of those things in Chrome without first going to the main site, so I decided to make it possible with keywords. By adding the keyword “redd” to search reddit, I now simply type “redd” before the current URL in the address bar and hit enter, and it’ll bring up the story on reddit – or take me to the submissions page if it hasn’t already been submitted. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it works for what I need and will hold me over until extensions are enabled on the Mac.

Enabling reddit was really nothing more than adding a new search engine – but I realized that the power of typing a simple keyword before the current URL and hitting enter to interact had much more potential, and would be simple to implement with other websites, like Twitter and Facebook. It wasn’t hard to find the URLs for sharing on Twitter and Facebook, and that’s all that is needed to turn your address bar into not only a search bar but another way to post to Twitter and Facebook (and I’m sure it would be easy to implement other sites). There are plugins like TwitterBar that allow you to do this with a click in Firefox, but with this you only need to type a keyword (which could be a single letter).

While this works well for sharing URLs, it also works for posting a tweet – just type your keyword and then your tweet, hit enter, and it’ll take you to Twitter.com to post. You can also use those together, if you want to add a comment to the URL you’re sharing.

Here’s the step-by-step guide of how to implement tweeting and link sharing on Twitter and Facebook from the address bar in both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, if you haven’t figured it out by reading already:

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