I found this article quite some time back when I was investigating MSN desktop search for a company I was working for at the time. Due to the branding, etc... they didn't want to implement.

Now that Desktop Search has been released, I have installed it and found it to be quite useful. I thought I would try the shortcuts outlined in Mark's article to see if they work in the current version of Desktop Search. Sure enough they do. If you type:

@sps,http://my-portal/search.aspx?k=$w into your desktop search bar, you can then type "sps search term goes here" and search for something in your intranet portal located at http://my-portal (of course if your portal name is different, you will have to replace it from the example :-) )

@google,http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=$w is one that I am sure everyone loves mu Microsoft Hates

You can search for people in your intranet like this:

@person,http://my-portal/search.aspx?k=$w&w="DAV:contentclass"='urn:content-class:SPSPeople'

I think you get the picture :-)

These settings can all be pushed out through the distro if you are pushing it out through AD. Excellent Stuff I must say !

Enjoy !