Ubiquity turns Firefox into DOS, and that's a good thing
Ubiquity is a new tool that’s just been launched by Firefox creators Mozilla, and I love it. It gives you a sort-of command line for your browser. As you might imagine, it’s not for your mum, or your grandma, but if you’re a “power user” – if you install extensions and like making the internet work for you – then I think you’ll love it too.
It basically allows you to use real words in a command line interface to describe what you want your broswer to do. Want to see a map of an address? You just type “map (address)”. Want to email some text to someone you know called Boris? Select it, and type “email this to Boris”. Want to look something up on Wikipedia? Or see the weather somewhere? Or translate some text? Or do a quick maths calculation? Or update your Twitter? All of this stuff is really simple to do with Ubiquity.
It comes in the form of a Firefox extension, which you can find linked from Mozilla’s introduction to the service. When installed, and you’ve rebooted your browser, you’ll get a page that comes up linking to the tutorial. Read the tutorial, or you’ll have difficulties, but you can basically just hit Ctrl-Space (the default shortcut, which can be changed) and the box pops up to let you start writing.
This is only version 0.1 – an early prototype – but it’s a great proof of concept, and I’m already finding it useful. It’s just a nice little toolbox with useful stuff in that’s sitting not too far from you at all times. If you wanna know more, then watch this video:
Ubiquity is available right now. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.
Ubiquity (via Lifehacker)
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