Ubiquity Could it be?

I have been playing around with a Firefox add-on called ubiquity just lately. Its been a lot of fun, and there has been a lot of noise over it in the web community.

What Is Ubiquity

The basic premise of ubiquity is to make simple tasks less laborious. The approach stems from something that Google has been doing for some time already. if you have ever tried typing map: and then a postcode or address in Google bar you will have found that Google instantly knows that you are wanting to view a map of a location. Well ubiquity allows you to do this without even needing to open a new tab. by bringing up the ubiquity HUD you have a wealth of possibilities at your fingertips.

Commands

There are a wealth of commands available to you when you install ubiquity, for example:

• translate almost any language
• look up currency conversion
• check IMDB for your an actor/actress
• display maps of location
• minimize URL’s with tiny URL
• get email contact information from your address book

and trust me the list does go on. The real beauty of ubiquity however lies in the developers ability to write and be credited for plugins, If you cant interact with a current API, just write a plugin to do it, all the coding can be done in javascript so you don’t even need to learn any complicated coding languages.

The Down Side

The only real downside to Ubiquitous in my mind is that it feels a bit too geared towards online applications run by google Now I have nothing against Google, I think they have done some truly amazing things. But I cant help but feel you wont be able to take full advantage of the ubiquitous features unless you are using services such as googlemail and have access to Google accounts.

Ubiquitous does also have bugs, quite a few in fact, but that’s what you would expect from an alpha release, but with all the support surrounding it I think these will be ironed out in no time and I can see a rapid uptake in the number of people using the service in the near future. Why not try it out and see for yourself.

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