16 August 2008

Command line

I'm not sure who came up with the idea that Google is the new command line. It was several years ago, I think, and I liked it at the time, but now I tend to think of my browser's address field as the new command line. It is especially useful to me since I use Opera and can customize it with any number of search commands. Prefixing with "a" will search on Amazon.com, with "dg" will search on my favorite German dictionary, etc. Here's the full list:

I'm sure Firefox has some sort of plugin to do the same. Having Google in there gives my address-field-command-line Google's tools (maths, unit conversion, etc.) plus access to those other silly sites making address-field > Google.

On a recent episode of Future Tense, Jon Gordon talked about a new web site that's making SMS into a command-line of sorts. Kwiry allows you to update your online accounts such as Amazon and Netflix. You can also leave notes to yourself much like Twitter. It's not incredibly powerful, but I have to admit that I'm jealous of the idea. I'm a heavy SMS user with the wife and Twitter, so I'll definitely be following as they add more functions.

[ posted by sstrader on 16 August 2008 at 2:12:49 PM in Science & Technology ]