PawEng » Firefox

UbiquityAnywhere — Quick Access to Ubiquity From Anywhere in Windows

PawEng — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:52:50 +0000

Ubiquity is Mozilla’s new tool that adds a command line to Firefox. We reported on it back in August 2008. Since then there have been a number of enhancement and upgrades to it. It is a very useful tool. In fact, it is so useful that I often wish I could use it from anywhere in Windows — and not just from within Firefox.

Enter UbiquityAnywhere. I created this small tool (using AutoHotkey) to give quick access to Ubiquity. UbiquityAnywhere provides two new hotkeys:

WIN + Q: Switch to Firefox (start it if necessary) and bring up Ubiquity.

WIN + W: Switch back to the application that was active when you pressed WIN + Q.

UbiquityAnywhere is a 200 kb download. It works on Windows, and requires Firefox with the Ubiquity add-on to be installed. UbiquityAnywhere assumes that you access Ubiquity with the default CTRL + SPACE key.

UbiquityAnywhere is copyrighted software (Copyright 2009 PawEng, LLC), but you may use it for free. You may not, however, distribute UbiquityAnywhere; instead, provide a link to this page. UbiquityAnywhere comes with absolutely no warranty whatsoever.

Cooliris — A Different Way of Browsing

PawEng — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:03:47 +0000

Cooliris is a new and different way of browsing photos on the web. Instead of seeing the usual lattice of thumbnail photos, Cooliris gives you a 3D wall of photos that you move along to see more and more photos. You can zoom in on a photo to see a full screen version of it.

Search for photos of any topic you want from photo sites likes Google Images, Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, and others.

Instead of just photos, Cooliris also lets you browse products on stores like Amazon, iTunes, and Walmart complete with links to the stores so you can buy the products. You can also use Cooliris to browse TV episodes, movies trailers, music videos, and news.

Cooliris is a free add-on for Firefox on Windows and Mac, Internet Explorer for Windows, and Safari for Mac. There is also an iPhone version.

Ubiquity: Supercharge Your Firefox with a Command Line

PawEng — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:43:24 +0000

I found a story on CyberNet News about an add-on for Firefox that really got my attention. The add-on is Ubiquity, and it gives you an instant command line interface to the web. I have earlier shared my love for command lines so I was very excited about Ubiquity. After installing it, I was not disappointed. Even though Ubiquity is only in version 0.1, it still rocks.

Once you install Ubiquity, you activate the new command line by pressing CTRL + Space (Option + Space on Mac). The command line pops up over your current web page. You can use the built-in commands to search the web, translate text, look up the weather, perform a calculation, send an email, find an address on a map, etc. The results are shown in the pop-up without you having to leave your current page.

A really cool feature is that you can select text, and Ubiquity will transform the text on your web page by performing the calculation or translating the text — it all happens in-place. When you look up a location on the map, you can ask Ubiquity to insert a link to the map. This is very handy when composing emails using a web-based service.

According to the Ubiquity website, the overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:

Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
Extend the browser functionality easily.

Those are pretty loft goals, but after trying out Ubiquity, I think they are on to something.

Read more about Ubiquity at Mozilla Labs.