Gadgetopia

Much like (insert color) is the new black, the URL is the new command line. Sites like whois.sc (who we’ve mentioned previously), A9, and others let you cut a step out of searching by just firing in your search terms along with the address. No search screen to wade through means that you go right to the results, which saves tons of time.

We’ve recently thrown our hat into that ring by developing quickyellow.com for a client of ours. Here’s how it works:

The first time you visit, you can go straight to the home page, or you can enter a search in the form like

http://quickyellow.com/restaurants/wa/seattle

which will take you to a Dex page that finds all restaurants in Seattle, WA. That’s not very convenient, though, so here’s the payoff: on your first search, the site gives you a long-term cookie that remembers your city and state. From there on, you can search the site with

http://quickyellow.com/seafood

which, in my example, would get you all the seafood joints in Seattle (since that’s the last place I looked). This is a lot faster than going to Dex directly and going through the search screen.

(Disclaimer: Our client does make a small commission on Dex referrals, but that doesn’t really affect me as a user, and it hasn’t stopped me from using this for any time I need a phone number.)

Give it a shot. It’s a fairly new system, so if you see a bug or have a suggestion, we’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment on this post.