The Mozilla Labs blog is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs to read. After their earlier Aurora Concept series, they have just announced an “alpha 0.1 prototype” release of Ubiquity. Its described as “An experiment into connecting the Web with language.”
It basically is a way to control the browser using language based instructions to create on demand mash-ups.
For example, if I am writing an email and want to embed maps, reviews etc, instead of going to various sites and getting the relevant links, I can use ubiquity to get and embed the information it into my email. The video below explains things a lot better, and you can also go to Mozilla Labs to install the prototype (which works with Firefox naturally). It looks very promising for something still in its infancy.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Tim Bennett said:
Sep 02, 08 at 9:45 amI’ve installed this and used it for a couple of things - mainly Wiki and Google shortcuts. It’s a little bit scary to consider subscribing to a command - if I understand correctly, a malicious developer could push out an update that does something nasty and all subscribers would receive it?
When you’re talking about an application with complete control over the browser, security becomes a big issue.
Kunaal Ramchandani said:
Sep 02, 08 at 10:01 pmThats unfortunately true, i guess thats why users are currently shown a red “DO YOU TRUST THIS SOURCE” page
Is it really that much worse than installing FF plugins?
In either case, it has come at a really interesting time, especially with Google announcing the impending release of Google Chrome tomorrow.
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover