Search engines are great at retrieving textual information, but even though a lot of search results today are actually videos, most search engines still only display a text link to those videos. A new Greasemonkey script from VideoSurf changes this by adding small film strips to every video that appears in your search results on Google and Yahoo, as well as to every video on YouTube’s search results page.
The Greasemonkey script works for videos from YouTube and MetaCafe. It would be great if VideoSurf also supported other services like DailyMotion, Vimeo, or Viddler, but given YouTube’s domination of the video market, this probably won’t matter too much.
VideoSurf, which by itself is a very good video search engine, uses its proprietary algorithms to identify the most interesting moments in these videos and allows you to jump right to them by clicking on the images in the film strip.
The only problem with this script is that it won’t take you to directly to YouTube or MetaCafe to see the video, but to VideoSurf itself. This makes sense, given that the script is a way to promote VideoSurf’s search engine, but it would be nice if you could have a choice of destinations.
Overall, this is one of the coolest and more useful Greasemonkey scripts we have seen lately and definitely worth a try.
Here is how to install the script:
- Install the Greasemonkey extension for FireFox (if you don’t have it installed already) and restart your browser.
- Click on this link to the script and then follow the instructions on screen.
- You’re done. Start searching!
