Ubiquity: an interesting way to interact with a browser

September 18th, 2008 by jose

Just a quick note to mention Ubiquity. It can be ‘quicksilver for firefox’ but it goes a lot further I think. It takes a very refreshing view to repetitive tasks we all do and renders them obsolete. For example:

You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to.  You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message 2851337837_652b1aca9ecomposition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed.  This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task.  And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful  reviews only links to them.

What I find impressive is the clarity of thought that could detect this as boring, repetitive and build a tool that obviates it. I’m not using Ubiquity (nor Firefox as my main browser) but this makes me consider switching.

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4 Responses to “Ubiquity: an interesting way to interact with a browser”

  1. darioNo Gravatar Says:

    I tried this a couple of weeks ago. The idea is interesting, especially in terms of extensibility, and I think the terminal-like GUI really rocks. But as an ultimate fan of quicksilver, which gives you the same functionality and much more but at *OS* level (not just browser level), I’m definitely not planning to use Ubiquity on a regular basis.

  2. David - computer docNo Gravatar Says:

    How do you specify the parameters that you are interested in? Some people would be interested in food quality, and ambiance while others would be interested in price.

  3. Macromafia Blog Says:

    Ubiquity für Firefox…

    Mozilla startet Ubiquity, eine Firefox Erweiterung, die unzählige Funktionen verschiedenster Webdienste mit an die Sprache angelehnten Befehlen von jeder Webseite aus zugänglich macht.
    [via: netzwertig]

    Dieses Video in HD und Vollbild bei Vimeo ans…

  4. SEONo Gravatar Says:

    The concept is a great idea no doubt. You would think the software would have to be intelligent enough to learn your personal preferences first to be able to decipher your future actions and save time. Otherwise it is just a guessing game.

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