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Feb 4

Visualize Serph Results Using Apple's RSS Screen Saver

Posted by Michael Simmons

Apple’s Mac OS X comes with a awesome RSS screen saver that takes any feed you are subscribed to in Safari and turns it into gorgeous text-scrapers with a sky-like background using Quartz.

Apple's RSS Screen Saver in action

Here is how to add any Serph results feed to the screen saver:

  1. Go to Serph and search for any hot buzz topic you want
  2. Click on the RSS button either on the page or in the address bar
  3. Bookmark the feed and place it somewhere where you can find it
  4. Open up System Preferences and go to “Desktop & Screen Saver”
  5. On the left-hand side choose “RSS Visualizer”
  6. Click on the “Options” button
  7. Choose the Serph RSS feed you want to use from the list and click “Done”

You’re all set. Now sit back and let yourself be engulfed in the shiny buzz-ness.

Feb 4

Adding Serph to your Inquisitor Menu

Posted by Michael Simmons   •   2 Comments

Serph on Inquisitor menuOne of the coolest things about Firefox is the ability to search any web site directly from the top of the browser. Us Safari users aren’t that lucky. The solution for us is something called Inquisitor from David Watanabe. It’s actually a lot cooler than Firefox’s tool because it actually returns live results from Google (and a bunch of others) right in the menu without ever leaving the page you’re on.

Inquisitor allows you to add links to additional search engines in the results menu. Below is how to add Serph to your menu.

  1. Install Inquisitor if you haven’t already
  2. Open the Inquisitor preference pane by going to Safari > Preferences, and clicking on the “Search” tab
  3. Make sure “Display links to additional search engines” is checked and click on the “Edit Sites” button
  4. Click on the + icon under the list and choose “New custom search shortcut…”
  5. Enter “Serph” (or whatever you want to call us) as the site name
  6. Enter this exact URL under the URL column:
    http://search.serph.com/do/browser/?query=%@
    Your screen should look something like this:
    Inquisitor Preferences
  7. Click done and enjoy.

This is the first article in our Tips & Tricks section for Serph. Stay tuned for more.