Amos mailed me today telling me about a new Mozilla Labs prototype Ubiquity which he called phenomenal. I was skeptical at first but this could be the killer app for Firefox. Yes that might be hard to believe but this prototype introduces a whole new level of interaction. Natural interaction that is, something that integrates itself perfectly in the work routine.
Ubiquity is a Firefox prototype add-on that is similar to Launchy but located in the browser. Launchy is a Windows launcher that makes things much easier. Ubiquity takes that concept to the web. The interface is loaded with CTRL SPace. A black transparent block is opened just below the header bars of Firefox waiting for input.
Now the interesting aspect of this is that everything happens in that black area. A basic example would be if you want to write a message about something that you discovered to Twitter. With Ubiquity you press CTRL Space and enter Twitter This is a cool thing that I discovered. Enter sends the mail to Twitter. That’s it. No more leaving a page, no widgets in the background that you need to open.
Lots of commands are available by default. I would say about 50 are available. This reaches from normal web searches, map searches, translations, adding events to the calendar, emailing, calculating or digging. Lots of stuff to explore and it is pretty exciting that users can create their own commands.
This requires some programming skills but I’m confident that we will see many user created commands that can be integrated into the own version of Ubiquity easily.
A wonderful feature is the Google Maps integration. If you got a list of addresses Ubiquity can map all of them on a Google Map and it is possible to add the map to the current page, for example an email or web form.
There is so much possibility. What can I say. Go get it right now, it is a killer app. Thanks again Amos, your tip was wonderful.
Mozilla Labs Ubiquity Is A Firefox Killer Application!
Tags: firefox mashup, firefox-add on, firefox-extensions, mozilla labs, Ubiquity
Related posts
Read »