I recently came across an interesting search application called FeFoo. All I could think of when I read the name was “Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” a quote from the Fairy Tale Jack and the Beanstalk (it’s interesting how random thoughts pop into your mind, isn’t it?). When I first came upon the site, I was pretty unimpressed. At first glance FeFoo looks like a simple search tool (remember the magic beans also looked pretty innocuous). As I explored FeFoo and discovered the advanced coding associated with it I could see that this search tool holds the potential to perform some powerful searches that almost make it magical in terms of customization.

When you first visit the site it gets cached on your browser, which makes it work very fast. All the processing happens on the browser. The server is only used to keep the software updated with the latest list of search engines and categories. Whatever you search directly goes to the search engine you are using. No information ever goes back to the FeFoo servers. By default it searches using Google. In case you wish to change the default search search engine visit http://fefoo.com/ and click on the “Settings”.I have posted a screenshot with notes below, so you will not miss any of the customization features associated with this search tool.

Using commands you can target any of the 40+ categories or 250+ search engines from the search bar. To use a command : (colon) is used. Let’s say you wanted to search for images of carrots for example. You would type :i carrots in the search box or if you prefer you could type :images carrots. You can use the name of a category or directly type in the name of a search engine. To search for carrots in twitter you would type :twitter carrots. To see a list of all the shortcuts you can use with FeFoo type :ls

The shortcut list features some really cool features…like typing ;kwout and a website address to take a screenshot…the following syntax would take a screenshot of this site… ;kwout http://farroutlinks.net/blog. (notice the semi-colon).

Fe-fi-fo-fum…I predict you will enjoy using this magical search tool called FeFoo! Let me know what you think!