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Mozilla Labs' "Ubiquity" Helps Automate Web Interactions
Martin writes "Mozilla Labs have released a prototype version of the Firefox add-on Ubiquity. It is basically Launchy (the application launcher) for Firefox with the difference that Ubiquity makes use of web APIs and the Firefox browser. The official website contains examples, a command list, information about creating your own commands and of course the Ubiquity extension that is compatible with Firefox 3.x. Ubiquity can pull and send data to various services like Twitter, display, find and embed Google Maps, perform searches, write emails, add entries to the calendar, digg stories and more."
I'm betting an iceweasel pelt that in 12 months you and most of the other dabblers will be on to the next fad and will have vague, disturbing, memories of this, just as I do of the emacs web browser. Just because a platform is programmable doesn't mean that -everything- should be implemented there.
The main arguments I tend to see for apps like this are from the class of geeks that believe that it is too inefficient to ever change apps/windows/remove hands from keyboard. Which is why I particularly enjoy the fact that one of the sample integrations is with Twitter, the web service that almost by definition means you are avoiding the 'work' in your 'flow'.