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goosh, the Unofficial Google Shell
ohxten writes "Stefan Grothkopp has come up with a pretty neat tool called goosh. It's essentially a browser-oriented, shell-like interface that allows you to quickly search Google (and images and news) and Wikipedia and get information in a text-only format. This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've seen in a good while."
Getting excited from old functionality in a commandline enviroment.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
In all seriousness, why not just use Lynx if you want text only?
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I tried it, and it is dissapointing from my point of view!
.... [66] In the U.S., the Driver Monitoring System debuted on the LS 600h L sedan. [52] ...
...
... Register Now for the 2008 LS-DYNA Conference on our conference website: ...
... 2004 - 2008 LS Frais Contact | Legal | Roadmap | Awex | Sitemap | Jobs ...
guest@goosh.org:/web> ls *
1) Lexus LS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The long wheelbase LS 600h L is equipped with Lexus Hybrid Drive,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LS
2) Quality Precision Innovation... since 1880 - The L.S. Starrett Company
Manufactures more than 5000 variations of precision tools, gages, measuring instruments, saw blades for industrial, professional and consumer markets
http://www.starrett.com/
3) Livermore Software Technology Corporation
10th International LS-DYNA Users Conference: June 8, 2008 - June 10, 2008.
http://www.lstc.com/
4) L.S. Frais - Excellence in Slicing and Packing
LS Frais. your slicing partner ! Our company Our services Our products
http://www.lsfrais.be/
Next, I'm gonna try operators and regexes - but I don't have much hope.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
source code says "readable" source code will be posted soon.
i await that.
theres a lot of cool text interfaces happening on the web. theres in browser vi (jsvi), and source code editors like CodeMirror, CodePress, and more[1]. all very cool!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Javascript-based_source_code_editors
Error: Operation timed out (1212449383081). I broke it.
Pointing and clicking is easy for some stuff, but the command line is still king for many purposes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So I loaded it and watched it work -- reminiscent of ANSI BBSs but with AJAX instead. It was quick on my laptop but on my mobile device it took longer to load that Google did itself and while I could enter search terms I couldn't submit them. But it's in BETA and it's a Google side project so we should all bow before its greatness.
:)
So here: <bow></bow>
I'd be more impressed if it were an actual shell.
The cake is a pie
How does it search Google images when it's text only? Is there an ASCII art module built in, or something?
... ASCII goatse isn't nearly as shocking as the real thing, which is a bonus.
Actually, hmm, that'd be pretty damn cool,
Just tried it. Wanted to read its documentation. Realized too late that 'man goosh' was a really poor choice of phrase, but just got
guest@goosh.org:/web> help goosh
help: goosh
Error: command "goosh" not found.
Phew!
Duh. You forgot Sudo.
You can actually take something like JavaScript Shell and add JSON based query features to it. This would allow things like command line based search, news... etc and has the advantage of using JavaScript as command syntax. You can write JavaScript functions to access and manipulate JSON variables. (easier said than done, from someone whose done it )
guest@goosh.org:/web> man woman
help: woman
Error: command "woman" not found.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
One of the biggest advantages of a command-line interface is that you can pipe programs together and create a workflow. You can't do that with this since it's just a command-line imitation in a web browser.
So no neat things like piping the images from an imagesearch.
Secondly, a mouse is still going to be required when you browse to one of the sites returned in the search, so this interface is only useful while you're actually searching.
It's cool, but really only as a novelty.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Get a mobile phone that runs Linux.
My blog
You can even set a default search engine. In that case anything that doesn't look like a valid URL goes to the default search engine. To top that off, you can select text, then middle-click on the background and it will be just like tossing the text into the location bar and pressing return. You can select a phrase from a web page and middle click to instantly run a web search on the phrase. It's one of Konqueror's coolest features.
I'd been excited in the 1990s about a browser growing to include all commandline functionality. Netscape started a project called "XMLterm" which used the browser to send commandlines to the local or a remote host, then display the output in the browser. Which showed some results as clickable icons in that resulting page. But the project never produced a usable release, and seemed to die sometime before Netscape itself turned into Mozilla and then Firefox.
But XMLterm lives! Someone's completing the project. I'm really psyched to see this system work. And even more psyched for the possibility that it could support different "Web APIs" at different hosts it connect to, different DOMs and other object models, perhaps with mappings to some grand unified object model (and browser for it). It seems like a great way to implement a client for goosh, this Google shell.
That would be really cool, and finally start to transcend some of the "CLI vs GUI" ghettoes we've stuck ourselves in. Or at least give the GUI people most of the CLI stuff, except its pure simplicity. Which, as a GUI person who uses CLIs all day long, sounds great to me.
--
make install -not war
Um, you need to get out more.
Start small. Leave the basement for a day-trip to the garage or back yard....
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Doesn't work with links .
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There are other comments on this story that show the same sentiment: "why use this when we've got a terminal (with a few scripts)"
Are these posted by the same people who say that Open Source's strength lies in its diversity?
We should applaud the effort that has gone into this project, even though it may not be equally useful to everyone.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Not only is it not against their TOS, they provide API tools and instructions to help you perform automated queries. What you don't have the right to do is drive huge amounts of traffic through them, such as by setting up your own google-clone website that you advertise to the world.
This space intentionally left blank
Don't worry. Google is included with Emacs.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
$ uname -a 1) uname 1 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=uname&sektion=1
I can type in search terms and get the results from Google. And...
Um...
How is this something I couldn't do before? I can certainly do this on my own (real) command line - surfraw has been mentioned, and a perl script and the Google API (or even without it) means "getting a list of links for a search term from google" is not exactly unknown.
It has a cute CLI-like interface, but not really. "This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell." Um, no, not really. It's a cute interface, but not a real shell by any stretch...
So what am I missing?
Advice: on VPS providers
On a somewhat related note, Google is experimenting with vi keyboard shortcuts for their search interface. You can test it at labs.google.com/experimental.
This is really sad. It's not UNIX until I can type
%> search "lindsay lohan\'s (boobs|tits|chest|underwear|bank account.*[0-9]+)"
Now if it was a real shell binary that you could run IN UNIX then I might be slightly impressed. I could make this "shell" in 10 lines of CSS!
My mobile phone also does not run linux. But it has two major advantage over phones that do: I already have it, and it's not made of unobtainium.
From goosh.org/goosh.js:
------
If you want to extend goosh.org, please take a look at the load command.
You can see an example module at http://goosh.org/ext/spon.js
Code of an extension: (indented properly)
------
function search_spon() {
this.name = "spon";
this.aliases = new Array("spon","spiegel");
this.mode = true; this.help = "search in spiegel.de";
this.call = function(args) {
this.start = 0; this.args = "site:www.spiegel.de "+args.join(" ");
this.query("web",this.args);
}
this.next = function() {
this.start += 4;
if(this.args)
this.query("web",this.args);
}
this.render = function(context, results, status, details, unused) {
if(results && results.results != "")
this.hasmore = true;
else
this.hasmore = false;
this.renderResult(context, results, status, details, unused);
}
}
register_searcher("spon","web");
So in other words, we've come full circle and invented gopher, archie, and WAIS.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
When the results come up, type the number of one and hit enter.
I'm sick of everyone talking crap on goosh. Goosh freaking rocks! I'm seriously quite amused by it. And it really is easier to type your search in to goosh and then just type the number of whatever result you want to see. It's quicker and cleaner and everyone saying "It's nothing like a real shell" completely missed the point. Props to Stefan Grothkopp.
fun
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'll certainly give this a look.
I suspect the majority of casual Google users really couldn't care less, though.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
It even has tab-completion!
Nice idea, but I like the SQL interface better.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
Ahh...just discovered one big downside. In firefox under Linux I can't search for something by pasting it (with the middle mouse) as, unlike with a text box, firefox assumes I'm pasting a url...bummer.
I noticed the same sort of thing creating an ebay auction some time ago...their fancy ajax text entry (unless I'm missing something) seems to defy any form of text pasting (as it's not an actual text box or text area).