Chrome and Firefox can do this too and it's easy so I don't get the reliance on DuckDuckGo for it.
In Firefox you go to the wikipedia page, right click on the search text box, then "Add Keyword for this Search". In Chrome, you do the same thing, right click on that search box and then click "Add as Search Engine".
You can add whatever keyword you want, like "w" and from then on, all searches with "w " as a prefix will go straight to Wikipedia's results.
I have shortcuts defined for Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Amazon.com, IMDB, a dictionary for my native language, my personal Gmail, my work Gmail, Google Translate and Hacker News.
For instance for Hacker News, I often want to search for articles I've read here, not to mention it's a valuable resource for getting other people's opinions on certain subjects. So instead of searching on Google for:
some topic site:news.ycombinator.com
I defined a prefix for this search "hn", and so I simply type "hn some topic". You can't use the shortcut for this though, you'll have to go to Settings and manually add a search engine setting.
For Google Translate, I basically type "enro phrase", for translating "phrase" from English to Romanian, while I type "roen phrase" for translating "phrase" from Romanian to English.
Wikimedia Foundation's Senior Designer, Brandon Harris, had a lot of insightful, interesting feedback[1] regarding the 'redesign,' (of which I happen to agree with):
-It's completely impractical and does not take into account some of the most basic ideas that Wikipedia is and depends upon. I don't think it's very well thought out or researched, and serves mostly as a hypothetical portfolio
piece for a design firm.
For example, the fact that Wikipedia is available in multiple languages is quite possibly its most important feature. The idea of burying language selection within an incomprehensible color band (that will only work on non-touch devices) boggles my mind.
- Many, many important principles are tossed away. Why do the designers change the meaning of the "history" button? Burying the revision history is counter to all things that wikis stand for.
- Research into the Foundation projects would tell you that storing a user's browsing history is against the privacy policy - so why include that?
- > "Sharing functions will be the same so no change is necessary" - except that there are no sharing functions.
- The most basic principle of product design is "Know the product," and these designers do not.
And finally,
This is to say nothing of the exercise in 'brand manipulation.' The most powerful brand that Wikipedia has is the wordmark itself ("wikipedia"), followed by the distinctive "W" logo (crossed "v" characters), followed by a single puzzle piece, followed by the puzzle globe. The brand rework here throws ALL of these things away and replaces them with a stylized "w" glyph that is almost but not quite exactly like the logo used by Wordpress."
The implicit assumption that it's the boyfriends that would be doing the startup and the girlfriends that would be sleeping alone in bed - the implication that obviously it would only be that way around.
It said "a few girlfriends" for carp sake. A few. Not all. A. FEW. The poem doesn't even begin to imply that it would only be that way around. The only thing obvious here is that some people are hell bent on finding injustice hiding behind every word. I feel sorry for those people. :(
I'm not bothered by much as a female in tech (and believe me, I hear a lot of ignorant, sexist remarks), but this comment really rubbed me the wrong way.
- I can really see this type of service blowing up, once you find the right product/market/fit.
- The slider above-the-fold on the 'shop' tab distracts me from the rest of the page. It wasn't intuitive to me that I could scroll down to begin shopping.
- A simple filter would be a great addition to the 'shop' page. It'd be nice to filter by type (e.g business, creative, etc.), price or design (rustic, elegant)
- I wonder if you would see more sales if you tried a/b testing your pricing model a bit. Is there a reason why you charge the extra $5.00 for edits? If the shopper pays $99 to own the theme, shouldn't he be entitled to edit it as much as he pleases?
- You're looking for resume writers. Have you connected with Hagan Blount? I believe he designs Infographic resumes. (http://haganblount.com/resume). Some of your designs require users to highlight a quote, etc., and I wonder if they could use help writing out these areas.
- Any suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down?
- We've thought about filtering but we've honestly seen no trends in which professions pick which designs - it's been all over the board.
- The shopper doesn't own the theme. Due to the copyright agreements that we have with the designers who created the resumes and the font foundries who created the typefaces, we aren't able to release the source files to be edited. Also, most folks don't have or can't use inDesign, which is what we use to typeset the resumes. We've tried to keep the price of edits low at $5 as a service to our customers because in early testing, we came across this as an objection. People need to revise their resumes or have different versions. We wanted to reduce friction there. We obviously don't make money on this but we just think it makes good business sense and is good customer service.
- We don't want to get into writing resumes. Instead, we'd rather partner with resume writers. They have a captive audience that's shown they're willing to pay for resume services. We'd rather get referrals from them than compete with them.
re: suggestions on how to make it intuitive to scroll down:
On the shop page: An anchor link that sits above-the-fold with a call-to-action like "start shopping" or "browse designs" would probably make it more intuitive. Anything that shows me a peak of what's below-the-fold would help.
Since the main slider occupies all of the above-the-fold real estate and has its own horizontal navigation, I just assumed I was 'done' with the page once I had scrolled through each slide.
I disagree with many of the arguments you make to support your theory, namely 1)the idea that the way users use Facebook wont evolve and get more sophisticated as they share more information, and 2) the idea that sharing more information about yourself even makes you more susceptible to stalker and hate crimes.
After I read your post, I went back up to the top re-read your proposal, which, in its simplest form, makes a the claim that reads: "Facebook-as-a-business will eventually kill the very users it needs to survive, because in order for Facebook to grow and profit, it will encourage users to share more about themselves with others, and as a result, users will share so much about themselves with others, (who they are, their interests, behavior, location) that they will become victims of crimes like rape, murder or even hate crimes and genocide.
This sounds outlandish, of not even a little silly. Surely, our acculturation with Facebook and the way we use it will evolve over time to protect our selves from this kind of thing from happening.
I don't mean to discredit the content of this post, but is anyone else tired of this argument circling around HN like a windmill? (Why you need a technical X to launch your idea). If the title of this post were (perhaps more appropriately) titled "Why you need a Technical co-Founder," I don't think this would have gotten any eyeballs.
When I first clicked this article, I thought it was going to be linkbait. I was surprised to find that he concisely and accurately expressed what I'd been unable to for the past few years: that non-technical founders shouldn't look for "programmers", they should look for "technical cofounders". This is after reading many articles on HN stating the exact same point, just less to the point. I'm slightly embarrassed because people sometimes come to me asking for a "programmer" reference, but I've never able to concisely tell them what why their question was wrong to begin with. The way he phrases the problem captures almost all of the talking points, and it's the phrase I'm going to use going forward.
1. Kudos Button: Why the controversy? I've always viewed it as a meaningless counter that's fun to hover over. I never took the counts seriously. Sometimes I visit your site just to send arbitrary kudos. What's most concerning about the buttons is the number of readers that feel "victimized," "deceived" or "tricked" from, well...a css element.
2. Svbtle: There are few names I've come across in my career that are as painful as this one to read, spell or pronounce. It gives me anxiety, and what's worse is that it's inspired by Svpply. A good name is a word that you can tell someone over the phone without them asking you how to spell it. Period.
3. The ideas panel is cool. Is there a way you could generate the list in other ways than just manually adding tags? Could you add a bookmarking tool, for example, that adds keywords to your Ideas List once you bookmark a page you find thought-provoking?
4. The S* Network: Your strategy to build a platform exclusive for exceptionally high-rated bloggers to use wont work for several reasons, here's just a few:
4a. I loved your site's design until I saw others on your platform using it. Then it became boring and nauseating. The design of a blog tells a story sometimes just as much as the content does. It gives the blogger personality, and the reader something fresh to look at.
4c. Top bloggers (any bloggers) not only use design to express themselves, but also to stand out. To be remembered. Eventually when you notice a site's design enough times, you realize you might want to check out who the author is.
4d. Social elements and "Sharing" buttons can look messy at times, but the fact is, bloggers like their content shared, and readers like to share content they enjoy. Removing arguably the most widely used tool on the web much poorer design that displaying a 'tweet' button after each post.
4e. Aside from 'ideas' your platform doesn't have anything that takes away the pain that enough users have to make it worth building. I add 'blogging' to pg's list of frighteningly ambitious startup ideas..
I think Kiln is a brilliant product name for what it is: a source code repo (kilns are designed to hold quantities of things) that encourages peer review (kilns dry or harden things).
I'm not sure I see how "subtle, with a V for a U like the Romans" or even just "subtle" is very apt for an exclusive blog network, can you mention why you think so? Certainly the positioning and marketing is everything but subtle so far.
- The word “subtle” is appropriate for a minimalist product with minimalistic design.
- The obscure spelling and, yes, small brand stumbling block it creates is fine for an exclusive and invite-only network; the nod to Latin inscriptions has overtones of class and education, which are both exclusive concepts as well.
> A good name is a word that you can tell someone over the phone without them asking you how to spell it. Period.
The problem here is that a good name (has become) one that doesn't collide with any popular search terms, and whose URL won't be taken. This is sort of at cross purposes with being easy to spell.
