CloudMagic is available as an application for Android and iPhone, as well in your web browser via their website, a handy Google Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on. Basically, if you are looking for a way to make searching for stuff easier, there is a one hundred percent chance that CloudMagic offers a way for you to use their service. We all want to make our lives a little easier, and CloudMagic could be just the solution you need.

What Does CloudMagic Do?

CloudMagic allows you to import your Gmail, Google Apps and Twitter account so they can all be searched from one place quickly and easily. With CloudMagic, you can type in a search query, and it will scan all three of the accounts for that term.

Therefore, if you typed in the name “John”, for example, it would find any instances of John appearing in your Google Apps, any emails with the name John and tweets. This makes it much easier to find something that could be on any of the accounts.

Setting Up Cloud Magic

Of course, if you are going to be using the Chrome, Firefox, iOS or Android version of the app, you will need to download and install them. If you are using the browser-based version, you can simply point your browser to cloudmagic.com.

Setting up Cloud Magic is a breeze. Whether using one of their mobile apps or doing it from your browser, the first step is creating a new account. Creating an account only requires an email address and a password. It literally takes about two seconds.

Once you have created an account the next step is to link your account with your Google and Twitter accounts. To do this, you will need to click on “Settings” on the mobile app and “Services” on the browser-based app. From there you will need to click “Add New Service” and log in with whichever service you would like to add.

If you log in with your Google and Twitter accounts on your phone, these accounts will be there when you log in on the computer, and vice versa. This makes it easy to use your mobile app while on the phone and your computer when you are at home.

Using Cloud Magic

Using CloudMagic is a snap. Once you have your accounts synced, simply click the search bar and enter what you are looking for. It will quickly scan all of your accounts to find items matching the term you entered. The search is blazing fast; it is quite impressive.

You can narrow your search to only specific things. If you only wanted to find calendar events that match your query, you can simply click the “Events” button. This way, if you wanted to find a doctor’s appointment without seeing tweets and emails about it, you could do so.

Of course, simply showing you the results would be useless. That is why you can click any result to be quickly directed to the proper application, either from your phone or from your computer.

Conclusion

This is a great application for quickly finding what you need from select services. I hope that they incorporate other services such as Facebook and other email clients (but let us be honest, almost everyone uses Gmail). As it stands, it is a great solution for organizing your Google and Twitter account, and I definitely recommend checking it out on your platform of choice.

Web Link
iTunes Link
Android Link
Chrome Link
Firefox Link

Have you ever looked through your Facebook feed and thought to yourself “It would be really awesome if all of this useless crap came up when I was searching for something?” Me neither! Google seems to think differently though, so last week they started flooding everyone’s search results with a bunch of nonsense. Happily they’re not complete idiots – they did provide a way to turn this crap off. Let’s get right to that.

The Fix

Are you ready to restore sanity to your search results? Pull up a Google search. See the personalized results at top, then swear (loudly if you’re at home or quietly if you’re at work). When you’re done swearing, click the gear in the top-right corner. Click “Search Settings“, and you’ll find this amazing option:

Click the “Do not use personal results” button with the enthusiasm of a kid stealing candy. Make sure you click “Save” before leaving this page, or the frustration during your next search will be immense.

That’s it! Google is back to not sucking, and you can go back to being a well-adjusted person (if you were well-adjusted before, of course).

Some Background

What was Google thinking? Well, here’s the story so far. Google fears Facebook, because Facebook is the only company on earth with comparable amounts of your personal information to exploit. Which brings us to Google Plus, the latest of Google’s many freaking attempts to create a repository of your personal preferences, friendships and interactions social network.

Plus is different than previous attempts, though, in that Google is pushing it, hard. Sure, Buzz was integrated with Gmail, but Plus goes way beyond that – we’re talking about TV ads, integration with Android, and even a big freaking arrow on the Google homepage:

And then, last week, Google decided they really wanted to piss off their user base. Now Google Plus posts are now integrated with Google search itself. That’s right – the totality of human knowledge, filtered through your friends and family.

No offense to the people I know; most of you guys are perfectly acceptable human beings. I just don’t want your input on the hundreds of searches I run each day. It clutters my search for information, and puts me inside a social bubble instead of helping me engage with the wider world.

Conclusion

Did you turn this off? Did it somewhat improve the quality of your life? Let us know in the comments below. Also feel free to rant about this being a bad decision on Google’s part, because that’s totally what I just did.

Did you not turn this off? Then, please add us on Google Plus to clutter your search results with our articles get awesome updates from us!

Well as I like to say to them, it doesn’t work that way.  Google isn’t HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey (at least not yet anyway) and it doesn’t read minds.  If you want Google to give you relevant results, you need to know how to search properly and which keywords you need to enter (and not enter).

Step forward this rather well designed and informative infographic, courtesy of HackCollege which gives a nice rundown of some of the most useful operators and shortcuts.  It also gives examples of how you would look for specific files and pages such as PDF’s and webpage archives.

Were all of these operators and shortcuts already known to you?  Or did you learn something new from it?  Do you have any other search tips you’d like to share?  If so, let us know in the comments below.

Created by: HackCollege

Search engines are a varied breed and also some of the tools that are used to access them. Call them search enablers or quick search aids, they are all designed to make the search process easier.

Drag & DropZones joins the gang and from all the favorable reviews it has garnered for itself, it seems to have done so with a splash. I found a couple of mentions on it when we were talking about the best Firefox extensions.

This Firefox add-on takes the idea of drag n’ drop and extends it so we can search the web quicker with the help of multiple search engines.

Sounds interesting? Let’s install this featured Firefox extension and see how it helps us manage search engines better.

Drag and Drop Your Keywords to Search the Web

I guess it’s the touch effect thanks to iPhones and Androids. Drag & Dropzones is also designed to save you a lot of typing. It’s done with the help of a large transparent grid that’s overlaid on top of the webpage you are viewing. Here’s how it looks:

And here’s how it works:

1. After installing the Firefox add-on, go to Tools – Drag & DropZones Settings and open the grid as shown in the screen above.

2. Drag & DropZones displays a grid on the right and a list of your installed search engines on the left. There are added entries for context menu actions too. The grids represent a drop zone for a specific search engine. When you are running Drag & DropZones for the very first time, all your Firefox Search Engines will automatically be assigned to individual drop zones.

3. When you need to search a web page with a specific keyword on the page, you simply need to highlight the word or phrase. Drag & DropZones overlays a semi-transparent grid on top of the current webpage. To perform the web search, you simply drag and drop the selected keyword onto the drop zone occupied by the search engine of your choice. A separate tab opens up with the results of your search.

You can also right-click on the page to bring up the semi-transparent grid.

4. You can also use the grids to hold the drop zones for all your context menu actions. The process is similar – select the keyword (for e.g. copy link location) and drop it into the relevant grid. Alternatively, right click on the page to bring up the drop zones.

Customizing Your Drop Zones

What makes Drag & Drop Zones cooler is you can customize it to your heart’s content.

1. You can add a maximum of 100 search engines (10 x 10 grid) or go for any of the other options. Each drop zone can be individually colored. You can move the little boxes around and arrange your similar search engines in bunches. For e.g. a bunch up the search engines that search visually.

2. A selection on a checkbox ensures that you can also add context menu items to the grids, which really extends the add-on.

3. Configure the various activation options and the delay settings for the overlay to appear to your liking.

4. A toolbar button (add it through View – Toolbars – Customize) allows you to toggle the Drag & DropZones on/off in case you temporarily need to do some other operations on the web page.

Adding your search engines to the default search engine bar is the only chore which you have to perform. Try Add to Search Bar for this. But that’s small stuff compared to the help this add-on provides as you go searching on the web.

What do you think of Drag & DropZones as a search engine manager? Do you think it speeds up your search? Will you add it to your list of favored Firefox add-ons?

We search with our browsers. That’s why it makes sense to have a search app on our browser of choice. CloudMagic is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. It is supported on Windows XP and above, Mac OS X 10.5+ & Linux (32- & 64-bit) kernel versions 2.4.x and above.

I am trying out CloudMagic 3.11 Beta on Firefox which is a 2.9 MB install.

Setting It Up With Your Accounts

There’s nothing much to do really. You install the browser extension and add your accounts for the respective services. CloudMagic goes to work indexing all the data in the services you have authenticated…and it’s fast. CloudMagic supports multiple accounts.

That’s nice, but what’s nicer is that CloudMagic stores all log-in details and the indexed data locally. That’s a few extra points for security, privacy, and peace of mind.

Super-Fast Instant Search…& All In One Place

Search should be at express speed. Nor arguments on that. No arguments also because CloudMagic search IS fast. As you can see that the magic all happens from the little floating box which makes an appearance when you log-in to one of your accounts.

You can bolster the search further by playing around with the settings on view. You can open up separate search windows, replace your default search (for e.g. Gmail’s search), or click on Preferences and put a check against Enable combined search.

Remember: As the data is indexed and kept locally, you can search through your multiple accounts even in the offline mode and also when you aren’t logged into the other registered accounts. I think that’s a pretty powerful option to have especially for your services on the cloud.

Here’s how a search appears. You can click on those orange colored highlighted keywords and open up a preview of the document that has it. You can click on the Events, Docs, Contacts, and Tweets tab to get the search hits on those apps. I find it especially useful when I want to quickly look up a contact or a document in Google Docs. That’s a plus because CloudMagic helps you search n’ work so smoothly between Gmail and Google Docs and across all your accounts registered with CloudMagic.

I am not going to get Steve Jobs in my Contacts, but definitely there are some mentions on my Twitter feed.

Another thing you will immediately notice is that CloudMagic goes to work immediately as you start typing. That helps you to narrow down on the right kind of search by trying out partial keywords.

For Power Users – The Advanced Search Operators

CloudMagic supports the same advanced search operators as Google and Twitter thus giving power users another spanner to work with. You can use it from the regular search box itself. Here’s a quick look at the page which lists them.

A Good N’ Fast Twitter Search

There’s little doubt that the default Gmail search is a speedy beast. But I can’t say the same for Twitter search always. It also has a few limitations as due to resource constraints, not every Tweet can be indexed in Twitter Search. It reaches back to only the last ten days and there’s a cap (I think) on the number of tweets indexed. It’s also not search-as-you-type like Google Instant. By indexing your Twitter timeline locally, you get to work around these limitations. And you can go offline too.

It’s All About Speed Baby!

Search is about speed and hitting the bull’s eye. CloudMagic delivers on both counts. It also delivers on the other productivity counts like giving us a single integrated interface that links all the supported accounts – offline or online.

Give CloudMagic a run and tell us if you find it to be a worthy ally in your efforts to search the cloud.

Check out these four more ways to make your Craigslist browsing just a little easier by letting you search all of craigslist at once.

Allofcraigs

Allofcraigs has a posh landing page that offers a textbook execution of a GIF, but the question is this – does it actually work? Well, I’m happy to tell you that besides it being just a pretty face, the site does exactly what it is supposed to do. Just punch in what you are searching for, and sure enough, Allofcraigs will search all of Craigslist and then present to you your search results from all over the country (or in a specific region).

Besides scouring Craigslist, Allofcraigs will actually run searches in Craig’s competitors, such as Kijiji and Backpage. Furthermore, the site offers a Firefox add-on and a Chrome extension among a few other items.

AllofCraigslist.org

AllofCraigslist.org has quite the similar title to the first site that I mentioned in this post, and as you might guess, it does basically the same thing. I guess the only question that you need to ask yourself is whether or not you want to give someone ad revenue. Using Google Custom Search, AllofCraigslist.org allows users to search nationwide for items of interest.

Granted, it functions a little like a watered-down version of Allofcraigs, but it does allow users to search in the traditional classes (“for sale”, ”community”, “gigs”, etc.)

Dailylister

Dailylister is a lot like the sites shown here, but it lets you search in the formal categories that Craigslist has to offer. For instance, I could search for a Chevy Camaro in the category of “cars+trucks – by owner”, but it still searches for items nationwide. The site uses Google Custom Search (much like the others).

It does have quite a few ads clogging up the white space of your search results. However, they have to pay for the site somehow, right?

Craiggers

We’ve discussed Craiggers before on MakeUseOf, but perhaps the site should be given a second look. Out of all the sites shown here, I believe that Craiggers is the prettiest to look at. Even while browsing, the user interface is clean-cut and incredibly easy to use, and although I am someone that believes in function over form, I’ll admit that this site’s appearance was what made me want to use it.

Beyond appearances, Craiggers does exactly what you would expect it to, and it does it with style. The site claims to be better than Craigslist, and I’m beginning to think that this might be true.

Conclusion

These sites simply make Craigslist-browsing a little less frustrating, and if you’re up for seeing the site in a different light, you should try them out. Granted, you may be like Craigslist (who has kept the same style design since 2001) and appreciate the same old thing that you know and love. There’s nothing wrong with that, and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

What other sites have you used to search all of Craigslist? Have you ever used the ones shown here?

Sophisticated as they both are, Chrome’s and Firefox’s search options are somewhat lacking (sorry IE, Opera and Safari users, I’m just not one of you). Here are two add-ons that will help you make the most of these browsers’ in-page search option. More importantly, they will help you find what you’re looking for.

efTwo [Chrome]

After installing efTwo, simply hit the F key twice or F2 to start searching. efTwo is a great enhancer to Chrome’s native search abilities. To start off, you’re not limited to an exact keyword. If you look for “aggregate”, for example, the extension will also highlight aggregator, aggregation and so on.

Another great feature is the ability to highlight multiple keywords on the page. If you type an expression, or even type a word, hit enter and type another word, efTwo will highlight each keyword in a different color. Use the arrow buttons to browse between keywords.

If you’re interested in just one word, click on it in the search box and browse only that keyword. The arrows will change color accordingly, which is pretty awesome. You can also click the small x that appears above the word to get rid it.

When you search for a term in Google, efTwo will automatically highlight those keywords in any page you enter from that search. When you enter a page and browse the keywords, the one you’re on will be highlighted in yellow and the page will automatically scroll down as you go.

efTwo comes with some settings you can configure. Many of the options I mentioned above can be turned off. You can also turn off some of the hotkeys that pop up the search box. Personally, I think the double F hotkey is the best, but Firefox haters might not want to be reminded of it every time they perform a search.

All in all, efTwo is a great addition to Chrome. The only bad thing I can say about it is that it doesn’t exist for Firefox (or any other browser).

Find All [Firefox]

Find All is by no means as impressing as efTwo, but it’s still a pretty useful add-on for Firefox users. After you install it, a button will be added to your Find bar: Find all.

If you hate having to scroll through a long page in search of a word, this add-on is for you. When you search for a keyword, the Find all window will open and display every instance of that keyword on the page, all bunched together.

According to the add-on’s page, clicking on an instance is supposed to bring you to that area of the page. This is what I expected to happen, but unfortunately it didn’t work. It’s still useful to see all your search results together like this, and you can always browse them as usual to find the one you need.

If you don’t like Find All’s appearance, don’t worry. It’s pretty customizable. You can also change some other things, like whether it will be activated on Enter or not.

This is what Find All looked like after I tweaked it a little bit. Much better, isn’t it? Hovering over one of the search results will show you its placing out of the total keywords found.

All in all, this is a cute little add-on, and if it works well for you it’s actually a real find.

Bonus: Find and Replace [Chrome]

If you need to print a webpage but want to change it a bit, or even if you’re just trying to pull a prank, Find and Replace for Chrome is a really handy add-on.

After installing, a new find icon will be added to your Chrome’s add-ons bar on the top right. Click it to find and replace anything on any page.

And watch how easily you can turn this:

Into this:

Fun, isn’t it?

Bottom Line

Surprisingly, I was really hard pressed to find good find enhancers. I thought the add-on market would be swamped with them, but even finding these two wasn’t easy. There are just not that many good ones out there.

I think efTwo is the best find enhancer out there right now, but unfortunately it’s not available for Firefox.

Do you know of any more good extensions that make the in-page search function better? I would be very happy to hear about them in the comments. Believe me, I will!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

However, sadly, none of the above options are perfect and none of them are as good as regular Google search “web” results. The Google Alerts tool has no option to only get results from “Web” (these results are only included in the “Everything” option), the Google News index is much smaller than the general index and Google Blog Search is too spammed.

Therefore, the best way to monitor recent pages indexed by Google around your search term (which can be your business or personal brand name, your favorite website or even your town, if you are, for example, a local journalist), is to scan daily through “Past 24 hours” search results:

Here are a few tools that both track pages on Google’s search results and remind you to check that page regularly (via email or browser update):

1. Track Engine

Track Engine is the oldest tool I am aware of that lets you track results on any page and delivers you the changes via email). I’ve been using it for ages to monitor recent web mentions of my personal projects or name. The free version of the tool lets you track 5 pages which have proved enough for me.

When adding a new page (“bookmark”) to monitor you can:

• Set how often you want to track the page (from once in two hours to once a week);
• Set the tool to highlight the changes on a page;
• Set the color to highlight the changes;
• Track changes to particular page elements (hyperlinks, images, numbers or dates);
• Disable tracking during weekends or weekdays;

Here is a sample of results delivered to your inbox:

2. Update Scanner (Firefox)

Update Scanner is another option that can help you monitor websites that do not offer an RSS or email subscription option. It reminds you to check out the changes via the browser alert.

To add a page to the scanner, right click on it and select “Scan Page for Updates“. In the dialog you can specify:

• How often you want the page to be scanned for changes;
• How huge the change should be for it to be highlighted (for example, you can ignore all changes which are less than 100 characters):

Here is a sample of Google search results scanned:

3. Page Monitor (Google Chrome)

Page Monitor is a valuable option for Google Chrome users. Like the above one, it also sends updates via browser alerts.

For each new added page, you can:

• Set how often you want the page scanned;
• Select the specific part of the page to track (via the “Pick” button in the “Advanced” section)
• Enable sound notifications;
• Enable desktop alerts.

Here is a sample of Google search results scanned:

Are you making the most of Google’s “Date” filters? Please share your tips in the comments!