Friday, 29 August 2008

Lets Connect the Web with Language, Says Mozilla

The Mozilla Foundation has released a very early prototype of mash-up software called Ubiquity, which is designed to make it easier to paste data from multiple sources together in a Web page or e-mail. Ubiquity allows users to make mashups using typed terms. It is, in other words, a Web 2.0 command line.

Ubiquity 0.1 is an "experiment into connecting the Web with language," Mozilla Lab's Aza Raskin wrote in a blog post. "Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time."

In its current form, Ubiquity offers several features, including the ability to add maps and Yelp reviews into e-mail without navigating away from the e-mail message or opening another browser tab. With Ubiquity, a user can, for example, type a restaurant name in an e-mail, select the name, option-click to bring up the Ubiquity command line, type "map" to generate a Google Map centered on the selected restaurant, and then drag that map to embed it into the e-mail so it can be shared.

A Ubiquity user can also highlight apartment listing URLs on Craigslist and generate a map that shows where the selected listings are located. Currently, the commands are hardwired, like "map." Eventually, Mozilla would like users to define their own commands and add complex ones, similar to macros and scripts in applications.

"This release is meant as an illustration of a concept and mainly focuses on the platform," Raskin wrote. "The next release will explore interfaces that are closer to features that might make it into Firefox." The Mozilla blog also includes a link to an author tutorial that will allow developers to write commands for Ubiquity.

The prototype application is available for download now on the blog post.