Ubiquity and FireFox can make you more efficient on your Mac
Who knew OPTION + SPACE would become such a powerful tool? It seems the folks at FireFox did when they created Ubiquity. Ubiquity has only been installed for a week or so on my machine and already I’m coming to depend on it as part of my arsenal of efficient tools, right alongside Quicksilver and TextExpander.
For the keyboard shortcut lover like myself, the time saved with these tools is a no brainer. If you are attached to your mouse and haven’t experimented with keyboard shortcuts yet, I highly recommend you do so. The time saved by eliminating that back and forth form keys to mouse or keys to trackpad adds up quickly. It’s my secret productivity weapon.
Ubiquity is available for both Mac and Windows, and can be found as a FireFox add-on by clicking this link. FireFox 3.x is another weapon in my productivity arsenal, along with Tab Mix Plus Dev Beta, Colorful Tabs and Evernote – all indispensable factors in my quest for maximizing my time. My goal is work – life balance, and while I still have a ways to go there, these programs are acting as stepping stones on the way.
How does Ubiquity work? Once installed, you simply click OPTION + SPACE on your Mac (the command is CTL+SPC on Windows, I believe) and the Ubiquity pop up window is called up. To use Ubiquity you can either type a command into the blank box, or highlight text on screen before you call the window up and type a command about the highlighted text.
Why does Ubiquity have me raving? If you use Google’s GMail, you can now add maps and directions into an email as you type it with just a few simple keystrokes. You can also drop in entries and links from sites like Wikipedia or quote text from pages you are viewing, among other things. You can use it in reverse as well. If you are on a site and want to send something to your email contacts, just highlight whatever it is and call up Ubiquity, then enter the email command.
Ubiquity also offers translation of text to any language in real time. Lately I’ve been brushing up on my Spanish, and when I get stuck Ubiquity helps me find the “missing” vocabulary word without me having to miss a conversational beat with whomever I’m speaking with on the phone. for languages I don’t know, it helps me understand what I’m reading by translating it to English – highly useful in doing research for articles.
There is a long list of commands you can use in Ubiquity, but they are all completely intuitive. Most of them are based on actions and verbs. For example, typing “wikipedia” then the word or phrase in Ubiquity calls up the wikipedia entry for that word or phrase. It also gives you a list of actions: emailing it, going to the page, quoting it, etc. Instead of mousing to several different web sites and using the tool bar to copy, paste and perform other duties, Ubiquity just let you do all of that in just a few simple keystrokes.
Ubiquity is in beta, and is far from perfect, yet. The folks are FireFox are working hard to iron out the bugs and make it better with frequent updates. So far the complaint I’ve heard the most is that it slows your browser down. This hasn’t happened to me, yet, but if it does I’m sure I’ll Twitter about it, right from Ubiquity. (OPTION+SPACE then Twitter+your 140 character post)
Ubiquity commands: the complete (and extensive) list can be found at this link
Update 9/29/08: another great post on Ubiquity was sent to me via Twitter today, found here
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September 13th, 2008
For your info, ubiquity is available for linux also