15 commands in action

Ubiquity handles natural language command phrases, so you can theoretically enter a command the way you intuit it, without having to learn the formal syntax. Like all putative natural language processing by computer, your mileage may vary.

Many of the commands can be abbreviated to the minimum number of letters unique to their targets. While "m" will bring up the MSN search command as the first selection, you can use "ma" to evoke the map command directly. To avoid variations that might change as new commands are added, I'll stick to either the full commands or abbreviations that might be further abbreviated.

1. Embedded mapMap. If Ubiquity did nothing but look up maps and embed them into an email, it would still be worth the installation. Any any message you compose in a web-based mail program, you can highlight the term you want to search, hit Ctrl-Space, type map, and the results will show up inline. Click on the relevant result, hit Space, pan or zoom to refine the Google Map displayed, then click on the footer, Insert map into page. Voila! Your recepient sees a whole map in your message, not a link. I've wanted this feature in Google Maps for years.
2. Email. This Gmail-only command allows you to send a page, a selection on a page, or a unique message. As with all Ubiquity commands, bring up the console by hitting Ctrl-Space. If you want to send a link to your current page to a friend, type Email to [contact name], where the contact name can be anyone in your Gmail contacts, and hit Enter. Ubiquity will even recognize first names, so Email to Fred will work fine.

If you want to send a snippet of the page to Fred, highlight the selection, call up the console and type Email this to Fred. Ubiquity will substitute "this" with your selection. If you want to send a new message to Fred, like "Thanks for sending that file!", type Email Thanks for sending that file! to Fred. Unfortunately, these messages open in a Gmail compose window in a new page or tab, but all you have to do from that point is hit Send.
3. Google. You knew this was coming. Preceding any term with the letter "g" followed by a space performs a search on that term. Like the normal Google search box, you can use advanced search operators for queries like "chrome -google". Typing any phrase that's not preceded by something Ubiquity recognizes as a command will run as a Google search by default, so "getting a passport to spain" will - you guessed it - do a Google search on that phrase. If you highlight a word or phrase on a page, you can enter g this into Ubiquity, and Google will search the highlighted text that replaces "this."
4. Wiki. Same principle, different service. You can search Wikipedia on a highlighted term by entering wiki this, or you can do the same with a new entry by hand ("w antonio gaudi").
5. Add. This "add-to-calendar" command adds a new or highlighted selection to Google Calendar. Unlike Gmail, the event gets added in the background, and the entry is confirmed in a popup window. To reiterate, Ubiquity accepts natural language entries, so "Dinner with Melanie Thursday at 7pm" will get slated correctly.
6. Check. Entering check [day or date] into Ubiqity will display your GCal entries inline. Entering check by itself returns today's calendar.
7. Weather. Entering we [city-state or zip code] into Ubiquity will display the current weather inline: the temperature, smog condition, wind velocity and humidity. I use this in conjunction with the email or twit command to tease my friends outside of California's perpertually perfect climate.
8. Twit. As much as I love full-featured Twitter clients like TweetDeck, nothing beats the simplicity of hitting Ctrl-Space and typing twit [message] to so_and_so, or sending a selection of text using twit this to so_and_so. At the moment, there's no way to receive tweets or ping Twitter for new messages.
9. Word count. As a student of copywriting, I'm frequently curious about an article's word length. Highlighting the desired text and entering word count into Ubiquity will give you just that. There used to be a Firefox extension that did the same with a context menu, but it seems to have disappeared.
10. Translate. You can translate a new entry or selected text. For new entries, type translate [word or phrase] from [language] to [language], and the result is displayed inline. If you translate this to english for highlighted text on a page, Ubiquity will actually replace the text directly on the page. When it works, it's amazing, but I've had mixed results with this command. It's worth pointing out that Ubiquity is currently at version 0.1.1 - an alpha release.
11. Define. Being able to do a dictionary lookup without leaving your current page by typing define [term] or simply highlighting a word, then entering define into Ubquity, is a lot less annoying that having to look up the word in a new tab. With highlighted words, there's no need to add "this" to define.
12. Highlight. To annotate a selection with persistent highlighting, drag the cursor over the selection and type highlight into Ubiquity. When you deselect it, the text is left with a yellow highlight.
13. Delete. You can actually delete images and text by highlighting (selecting) them and entering delete into Ubiquity.
14. Undo. If you get carried away with highlighting and deleting passages, enter undo.
15. Digg. Feel free to use this one for this article.

georgexu316

Since we're on the subject, let me pimp my project, Idiquity: [geekmatters.com]

For those of us that have left Twitter for the Open Source gardens of Identi.ca, this is a configurable client that will work with every Laconica instance (and even Twitter for the time being). It keeps the simplicity of being able to post with a single command, but it also offers checking your timeline.

t3knomanser

Link: [tools-for-thought.com]

Gakusei

Link - [bit.ly]

Pettsvaldo

I would guess this is the post they're referring to: [tools-for-thought.com]

Michael A. Plikk

[tools-for-thought.com]

Pici

Linky?

Bubarubu

"The Tools for Thought blog runs down 15 useful commands you might not have known for Ubiquity,"
Which are?
Anyway, for we early testers who had a bad experience, try it again, it no longer crashes the browser ^_^

Anyway, yeah, ubiquitise me guys.

Phoshi

The Ubiquity extension update plays nicely with my Fast Dial extension in my main Firefox browser. ^__^ The earlier version was crashing out Fast Dial...

Now I can play and have fun with these commands! ^__^

@Phoshi: "...Ubiquitise me..." I really like that expression! ^__^

Asian Angel

@Pici: @Michael A. Plikk: @Pettsvaldo: @Gakusei: Go team!

Bubarubu

I like the lyrics command that you can add.

Love the fact that you can add new commands to it. Just wish I could use it as a terminal too!! :D

Superhuman

I'd love a whois command, but haven't found it yet.

schmappel

It's a decent article, but I was kind of hoping for 15 commands that weren't built into Ubiquity. Oh well.

jokermatt999

Doesn't Ubiquity seem like it should be an extension to Quicksilver? Why can't Quicksilver do all these things, plus a bunch more? I think Gruber nailed it when he called it Quicksilver but only for the web.

illn00b

@illn00b: Unlike Quicksilver, Ubiquity is in active development. QS is kinda languishing in the Open Source world.

And the goals are very different: Ubiquity is meant to be the eventual "AwesomerBar" to expand FF3's "AwesomeBar".

t3knomanser

@t3knomanser: You may want to consider Identiquity for your project's name. Idiquity...umm...just doesn't sound right...

Raydancer

this is BRILLIANT. sorry for shouting!

apex2000

@Raydancer: Although, in my defense- the code is very clean now. I'm still a little embarrassed to be using tables for output, and the function to turn #hashtags into links is a little naive, but the code's pretty clean.

This weekend I want to add automated timeline checking using the displayMessage() function.

t3knomanser

@Raydancer: It started as an ugly hack, I felt it deserved an ugly name.

t3knomanser

biggest use i have is really easy translation, and easy search to specific sites.

Dan Cardin

i'am looking for a way to write just mail instead email.
In france we use more mail than email someone know how to do that ?
Regards
Bussiere

bussiere

Thanks for the info on Ubiquity. I've had some problems with the mapping functions with Craigslist still getting used to the plugin. Another good post with Ubiquity command information can be found over at AgentGenius. [bit.ly]

jbinfrisco

[The U3C is coming soon!]

CITguy

I've only been using Ubiquity for a while now but already it feels natural to do it and is a hell of a timesaver.I use Twitter, email and calender many times a day and it really is an amazing app, especially considering it is an alpha
I'm trying to use hotkey commands and Launchy to avoid the mouse as much as is possible, something I wouldn't have thought possible until relatively recently.

Cripesonfriday

I have found a ubiquity code to use Google's calculator. Courtesy of Davanum Srinivas [davanum.wordpress.com]

vishr

I really do want to love Ubiquity, I've had it since it was released, but for the life of me I can't seem to integrate it into my daily workflow (or even remember to use it). Maybe it's because I don't use the current built in commands that much or maybe it's because I haven't really experimented with it that much yet. Anyone else feel the same?

LoneWolf008

@schmappel: Here's the Ubiquity Command Wiki.
It has a whois as well as many other tasty commands. (EBG-13 nalbar?)

crazymatt1

@schmappel: Check the Ubiquity Commandy Wiki. It has a whois as well as many other great commands (EBG-13 nalbar?)

crazymatt1

I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I want to write a command to download a torrent using my application of choice based on selections in the browser. This could possibly be extended to a "Down-Them-All" type functionality using bittorrent as the transfer mechanism. Maybe even eventually the command could notify someone that the download has started?

rhb

[user=schmappel]: You can find a Ubiquity whois command at: [www.starwarsdatapad.741.com]

There is a wiki of "Commands in the Wild" at: [wiki.mozilla.org]

The latter also lists plenty of site-specific commands that are worth checking out.

korussian

Cal for the calculator function is amazing. it is now my MS calc replacement. i can even use high level math and variables with it. defiantly a great keyword.

spawned4562

Today, I finally have time to try Ubiquity, & it looks promising, the map embed is worth the price of admission by itself. Unfortunately, Ubiquity croaks my Hyperwords toolbar for some reason and it can't quite replace all the functions I use Hyperwords for, so it has to go until it grows up and plays nice with others.

BlogsOfSteel

@All: Wow, sorry for the amazingly stupid stupidity. I accidentally removed the link while fixing a small error with the post; I added it back now. I'm glad our commenters are willing to occasionally take the wheel for me ;)

Kevin Purdy