In December of 2005, Yahoo! opened their Search Shortcuts protocol to everyone and created a new service called Open Shortcuts.  Open Shortcuts allow users to type simple !commands into the Yahoo! search box to quickly find assigned websites or services.  They're customizable and you can assign them to almost anything.

Yahoo has created a base set of Open Shortcuts for folks to use and get used to the service with.  For example, typing !wsf will return the weather in San Francisco while !mail friend@email.com will compose a Yahoo Mail message to friend@email.com.  Last month Yahoo added more Open Shortcuts to their list of available commands.  At the same time, they increased the number of custom shortcuts that each user can create to 60.

I hadn't really spent much time using Open Shortcuts until today.  They're actually pretty cool and I could see them saving people a lot of time.  Instead of navigating through Yahoo's site to check the weather, just create a shortcut like the one mentioned above.  If you visit Wikipedia frequently create a !wp shortcut to it.  Of course… the shortcuts are really only time saving if you use Yahoo! as your start page.  If you do, the cursor automatically jumps to the search box when the page loads, giving you instant access to your shortcuts.

Open Shortcuts is still in beta and, like many online services, may never leave that stage.  But it's an interesting idea and it shows that search companies are always looking for new and different ways to make search engines more friendly.  If your site is Yahoo! linked at all, creating a group of Open Shortcuts for your users to use might make finding and navigating your site a lot easier and faster.

!imm

Now I wonder where I might point that one…