Friendly Tech Ninja Linux how-to's for beginners

Enhanced web experience with Ubiquity

Firefox is one of the jewels of the Free Software crown, and it makes a great partner with Ubuntu. Out of the box you get  a bleeding-edge, highly efficient platform for fully enjoying the bounties of the web.

As you might know, Firefox is also highly extensible. It's easy to add some features that were not originally bundled with the browser. Ubiquity is a über-extension, that a makes your daily experience on-line more agile and fun. I say über, because it provides multiple functionalities that are otherwise given by a plethora of other extensions or web applications.

Take maps for example.

There is no need to visit google maps. Tell Ubiquity "map 18 Brooklyn Ave, NY", and it will show you where it is. If you see the address on a page, it suffices selecting it and asking ubiquity to map it.

Plus, you get e-mail. If you're using Gmail type "mail I love you dear! your_spouse@gmail.com" and you're done.

And twitter "twitter Writing a blog post while showing how cool Ubiquity is." I actually did that.

Another remarkable feat you can impress your friends is adding an event to Google Calendar just by typing "Dinner with Katie on Friday". That's right, Ubiquity understands natural language. Check your calendar, someone's getting lucky this Friday night.

Also, select a piece of text on a page written in a incomprehensible (for you) language and type "translate this to English". You start getting all the potential. Additionally you can check the weather for a given location, watch a youtube video, define a word. The options are literally boundless, and Ubiquity can further be extended by developers to include any cool extension you might think of. Play songs using Grooveshark, for instance. All of this neatly integrated with your Ubuntu system, by using its eye-candy alert system.

Watch the intro video, or drop us a line with your personal experience with Ubiquity and with your favorite extensions!

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