Custom Search Providers for Internet Explorer

knom — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:12:00 GMT

I’m sure all of you know the search box in Internet Explorer!

You can search ANY searchable site there via pluggable search providers.

Per default some of them are installed, but you can add your own!

Here’s how to do it:

Go to the page you want to search through.
Search for “TEST”.
Copy the URL of the search result page (where TEST should be in somewhere)
Now go to the Internet Explorer Search Page and paste the URL in the rst textbox.
Choose a name and select install.
Now you have a new search provider in the search box, which will search the wanted page (and substitute TEST with your search text).

Note.. the search providers are standardized and will work in any browser, which supports the open search specification.

Note 2: Some sites are clever enough to include a search provider already!

Read here how you can solve equations, get the current weather or other thing directly in the search box.

Free mail with Windows Live - Custom Domains

knom — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:18:37 GMT

Recently I came across a really cool live server called "Custom Domains". This service is currently evolving into "Windows Live Admin Center".

What does it do?!

You get an e-mail server for your custom domain for free! You can then create up to 500 mail accounts on this service, each with 5GB storage. Neat, isn't it? For universities and schools you can even get more accounts if you register in the free program "Windows Live @ EDU".

So these are the 10 steps how to register your domain:

Go to http://admincenter.live.com
Click the button "Get started"
Enter the domain name (domain needs to be already purchased, you also need authority over it's DNS records.
IMPORTANT: Select "Set up Windows Live Hotmail for my domain", because otherwise you can run into problems with the DNS.
Confirm your domain settings & accept the terms of use.
To confirm you have authority over your DNS (and are therefore the admin of the domain) add the following MX record to your DNS server (without mail service selected it would've been a CNAME record, which is not allowed to be customized by several providers).
After the DNS has been configured properly refresh the page.
Add users (they will automatically get a LiveId with user@domain.com - and can logon via mail.live.com)
Optional but useful: Set up a TXT record on your DNS service to notify other mail servers that hotmail.com is handling your mail (recommended for Spam-Filter purposes)
Optional but nice: Redirect a CNAME (subdomain) of your domain to the hotmail service: So people can enter webmail.mydomain.com and will get to the mail.live.com site.
Optional but neat: Allow anybody to sign up for accounts, co-brand you webmail interface or use the Live Webservice APIs to automatically manage users in a batch.

knom's developer corner : Windows Live

Custom Search Providers for Internet Explorer

Free mail with Windows Live - Custom Domains