Fast Forward from anywhere!

Last week Sep Kamvar recommended a simple API and button for using Fast Forward. I didn't feel like sleeping so here it is...

Clients (like the Firefox toolbar) ask BuzzBox for recommendations at http://www.buzzbox.com/q/<response type> where response type can be xml or rss. I added two more response types: redirect, and html-redirect.

The redirect response type simply redirects to the top recommended page. The html-redirect is a bit smarter and uses a really cool hack from Niall Kennedy. The html-redirect sniffs your browser history and only takes you to pages you haven't already visited.

A small detail to add - the recommendation needs at least one parameter, url, set to the place you are searching from. So a full example is:

http://www.buzzbox.com/q/html-redirect?url=http://flickr.com

If you want to get fancy and embed this in a blog, wrap our fast forward button icon with the anchor such as:

<a href="http://www.buzzbox.com/q/html-redirect?url=http://techcrunch.com">
<img src="http://www.buzzbox.com/static/images/chevron-button32x32.png" border="0" />
</a>


Which would look and act like this: (go ahead and click it!)