I came across the Ubiquity plug-in for Firefox the other day. If you use your browser a lot, and really like cool, cryptic ways of saving you steps, I could see this being revolutionary (on a personal level). I came across this after reading some stuff about my favorite utility, QuickSilver; the premise and usage of Ubiquity is comparable. Ubiquity allows you to tie other services into the current Web browser. For example, in this video, by one of Ubiquity’s creators at Mozilla, they show how to use Ubiquity to add a Google map to an email, then add a note to their calendar, without ever leaving the current browser window. Later in that same demonstration, part of a Web site is translated from Japanese to English, again, without leaving the current browser window. For more information, also see the other videos by Aza Raskin, http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/, and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9527.
To be clear, Ubiquity is still in a beta format, and it’s pretty geeky stuff. But if you’re the kind of person that likes cutting edge (but still useful) ideas, and/or, if you have some time to kill, check it out.
