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goosh, the Unofficial Google Shell

Posted by kdawson on from the land-a-gooshen dept.

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."

33 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. Totally geeky by Daimanta · · Score: 5, Funny

    Getting excited from old functionality in a commandline enviroment.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:Totally geeky by vanyel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is amazingly fast, you'd think it was a *real* command line environment: fast and efficient.

    2. Re:Totally geeky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It kind of reveals some good UI design choices though. For example, why should the Google website have a textbox for the search input anyway? If you're at Google, all you'll type in will be for a search. So why not just capture all keyboard inputs into the search input box instead of requiring the user to ever explicitly click/tab and put the input field into focus?

    3. Re:Totally geeky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ha ha.

      Click for definition of Goosh

    4. Re:Totally geeky by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Informative
      There's already a better choice for command line integration: try surfraw. This lets you stay within a real command shell such as bash, and just type

      $ google what I want to know

      You'll get the results directly in a browser of your choice. If you're like me, you have the browser set up as w3m, so that the google results simply appear in the same terminal where you can click on them. Since w3m is a pager like more and less, you can postprocess the google output, eg

      $ google hello | grep Cached
      www.hello.com/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.hellomagazine.com/ - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/ - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello - 39k - Cached - Similar pages
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_world_program - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/hello.htm - 157k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.ipl.org/div/hello/ - 20k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.mylalaland.com/hello/ - 6k - Cached - Similar pages
      publicaddress.typepad.com/ - 58k - Cached - Similar pages
      www.sanrio.com/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages

      Best of all , surfraw is not just limited to google, so you can have a complete shell browsing experience for a lot of different sites.

    5. Re:Totally geeky by nuzak · · Score: 4, Informative

      Capturing all keyboard inputs would require javascript, and if you have that enabled for google, you'd have noticed it already sets the focus to the input box when loaded.

      --
      Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
    6. Re:Totally geeky by Dpaladin · · Score: 5, Funny

      I find that Linux users always Bash new shells, to be honest.

      --
      Bad puns gave me bad karma. =(
    7. Re:Totally geeky by smittyoneeach · · Score: 4, Informative

      Also, w3m runs nicely as an inferior process under emacs.
      http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/emacs-w3m#WThreeM

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    8. Re:Totally geeky by wolftone · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...there's a process that is inferior to emacs?

  2. What is this junk? by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Funny

    I tried it, and it is dissapointing from my point of view!

    guest@goosh.org:/web> ls *

        1) Lexus LS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    The long wheelbase LS 600h L is equipped with Lexus Hybrid Drive, .... [66] In the U.S., the Driver Monitoring System debuted on the LS 600h L sedan. [52] ...
    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. ... Register Now for the 2008 LS-DYNA Conference on our conference website: ...
    http://www.lstc.com/

        4) L.S. Frais - Excellence in Slicing and Packing
    LS Frais. your slicing partner ! Our company Our services Our products ... 2004 - 2008 LS Frais Contact | Legal | Roadmap | Awex | Sitemap | Jobs ...
    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..."
    1. Re:What is this junk? by peragrin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Now type in one of the numbers. The link opens up in a new tab/window

      Or type

        open http://slashdot.org/

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:What is this junk? by pablomme · · Score: 5, Funny

      Unless you have bound Alt + -> to "Horizontal Maximize" in compiz. Of course, if you happen to briefly forget you had, you may stare at the page for a while wondering "Wow - just how the hell do they do that!".

      Not saying this happened to me. It was.. erm.. a.. friend of mine.

      --
      The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
    3. Re:What is this junk? by dominious · · Score: 5, Funny

      I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of search entries for ls in Google's logs tonight..

    4. Re:What is this junk? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Funny

      "it is dissapointing from my point of view!"

      I'm not surprised. Check out the kernel it's running on.

      guest@goosh.org:/web> uname -r
          1) uname
      The uname() function shall return a string naming the current system in the character array sysname. Similarly, nodename shall contain the name of this node ...
      http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/uname.html

          2) uname 1

      http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=uname&sektion=1

          3) uname function.
      uname is NOT in the ANSII library but is handy for getting system information. It will return handy things like:. System type (name). Host name (Nodename). ...
      http://www.space.unibe.ch/comp_doc/c_manual/C/FUNCTIONS/uname.html

          4) Unix man pages: uname (2)
      UNAME(2) Linux Programmer's Manual UNAME(2) NAME uname - get name and information about current kernel SYNOPSIS #include int uname(struct ...
      http://www.rt.com/man/uname.2.html

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    5. Re:What is this junk? by HSpirit · · Score: 5, Funny
      or

      sudo rm -rf /
      from Microsoft IP addresses ;-)
  3. Whoops. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    guest@goosh.org:/web> web penis
    Error: Operation timed out (1212449383081). I broke it.
    1. Re:Whoops. by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Funny

      it's not broken

      guest@goosh.org:/web> web penis
          1) Human penis size - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      Human penis size refers to the length and width of human male genitalia. Interest in larger penis sizes has led to an industry devoted to penis enlargement. ...
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size

          2) Penis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      The penis (plural penises, penes) is an external sexual organ of certain biologically male organisms. The penis is a reproductive organ, technically an ...
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis

          3) Things You Didn't Know About Your Penis, Interesting Facts That ...
      (WebMD) Here are some things you might have wondered about your penis, but were ... Here's how to avoid penile fracture: don't use your penis too roughly. ...
      http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/19/health/webmd/main3949777.shtml?source=mostpop_story

          4) YouTube - Is it a penis
      ok first of all this is not my video, please to not think it is, i had recently seen it at my friends house and decided to upload it from www.funnyjunk.com!
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0sQA9ILZSU

  4. Re:Lynx by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Informative

    links is superior.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. I'm kind of glad it didn't work... by gardyloo · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  6. Aah, the world is a sane place again :) by jaxtherat · · Score: 4, Funny

    guest@goosh.org:/web> man woman

    help: woman

    Error: command "woman" not found.

    --
    http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
  7. Not particularly useful by Zouden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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"
    1. Re:Not particularly useful by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Informative
      I posted this in another comment already, but here's a version with more details: if you use surfraw and w3m together, you can essentially have clickable google results inside an xterm, and a first class piping mechanism. You might have to change the color scheme in w3m if it clashes with your *term settings, or just try this out in a plain vanilla black and white terminal.

      apt-get install surfraw w3m

      export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/surfraw

      export SURFRAW_graphical=no

      export SURFRAW_browser=/usr/bin/w3m

      export SURFRAW_text_browser=/usr/bin/w3m

      export SURFRAW_graphical_browser=/usr/bin/iceweasel

      export SURFRAW_graphical_remote=yes

      google hello # (clickable results "in" the terminal)

      google slashdot | grep Cached | head

      slashdot.org/ - 76k - Cached - Similar pages
      slashdot.org/bookmark.pl?url - 13k - Cached - Similar pages
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot - 83k - Cached - Similar pages
      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect - 34k - Cached - Similar pages
      Cached - Similar pages
      yro.slashdot.org/ - 44k - Cached - Similar pages
      yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/05/02/0235228.shtml - 451k - Cached - Similar pages
      hardware.slashdot.org/ - 40k - Cached - Similar pages
      Cached - Similar pages
      politics.slashdot.org/ - 45k - Cached - Similar pages

      It's also possible to write some scripts so that w3m can open new terminals when clicking a link, and if you cannot live without images inside a terminal, there's the w3m-img package you can install.

      I also like to use w3mman as the system man pager, which lets me click on urls and file paths referenced inside a man page.

  8. Re:Slow and doesn't work on my mobile browser by merreborn · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's in BETA and it's a Google side project
    In the block of text at the top of the page, it says "NOT an official google product!". Additionally, the whois info for the domain shows it's personally registered by Mr. Grothkopp himself, in Germany.

    As such, if by "google side project", you mean "an experimental project created by a google employee", I believe you may be wrong. It's some random hacker's side project, and it queries a google API, but that's the only resemblance to a "google side project" it bears.
  9. Re:Slow and doesn't work on my mobile browser by aztektum · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That font seems to be pissing me off.

    --
    :: aztek ::
    No sig for you!!
  10. Future explorer... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny
    This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've seen in a good while.

    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. . . .
  11. Ironic... by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Kind of ironic, that this command line web application, won't work in a commandline browser.

    Doesn't work with links .

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Ironic... by Malevolyn · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thanks. You just ruined Portal for all of us who are too broke to afford hardware that can run it. =(

      --
      Your ad here.
    2. Re:Ironic... by oracle128 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Technically, the *player* is promised cake and grief counselling at the conclusion of the test, not necessarily the character (Chell). It is not specified that they will actually be given the cake, only that it will be available (which it was, the character presumably being dead was just an unfortunate circumstance preventing the character from eating said cake). Nor does it specify that "cake" isn't a metaphor for something else, such as "dumped into an incinerator" or that it may be available in the afterlife. We were shown the cake, we know it exists. If Chell didn't want to go back and get some, it's her own fault. Perhaps this user has only used cheats to get to the last level, instead of playing through the whole game.

  12. Re:Difference? by sveard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:What about vi? by Nullav · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't worry. Google is included with Emacs.

    --
    I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  14. I guess I'm missing something... by afabbro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  15. Call me when it supports regular expressions by phreakhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  16. Re:There will always be a command line by ari_j · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pointing and clicking is easy for some stuff, but the command line is still king for many purposes. And this isn't one of them.