Ubiquity

My previous post was sent from a Firefox add-on called ubiquity.

One of the reasons we use Mozilla Firefox rather than Internet Explorer because they seem to plug security holes a little quicker than Microsoft does.

Another reason is that there are tons of add-ons to firefox that you can get. We currently have the Delicious add-on, the get directions from google maps add-on, the weather add-on, and the download status bar add-on. Add-ons are basically small programs that add a little more functionality to the program you are using. Our weather add-on for instance, does nothing more than display the weather forecast underneath the little X button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

The ubiquity add-on is quite a bit more robust than the weather one and it's basically an attempt to add some easy spoken language commands within firefox. I can access commands by pressing CTRL+SPACE and typing what I want.

For instance, if I'm reading a site and I run across the word "Bornholmsk". I can simply highlight the word, press ctrl-space and type wikipedia to get a definition. Or I can read ２１世紀に、国際化をよく考えなければなりません。

highlight that, press ctrl-space and type translate.

Or I can press ctrl-space and type weather Las Vegas, NV and get the weather

here's where it gets cool if you have google mail or google calendar.

I can press ctrl-space and type "email Hello how are you to jason Smith" and it will automatically bring up my g-mail and input "hello how are you" in the message and Jason Smith (my google contact) as the send to address.

Also, if I want to add an appointment to my google calendar I can simply press ctrl-space and type "add-to-calendar Meet Jason at the mall from 6pm to 7pm tomorrow" and it automatically adds a new appointment to my google calendar for tomorrow from 6 to 7pm.

There are many more commands and options and it's still in the "prototype" phase, but all-in-all it's probably one of the best little add-ons I've seen in a long time.

If you use firefox, it's worth a look.