Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Barce — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:50:49 -0000

Wow, you start off with a really great title, "Why Ubiquity will not be ubiquitous," but in your 641 or so words of text ( according to Ubiquity :-D ), you don't give one reason why it won't be ubiquitous.

Well, let me give you a few reasons why it is going to be ubiquitous.

1) It's command-line for your browser. The potential of that is described with great perspicacity and spirit in Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" linked here: http://www.cryptonomicon.co...

2) FACT: Toolness.com , a site for vetting Ubiquity functionality , is experiencing viral growth:
http://siteanalytics.compet...

They are scaling servers as I write this.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Brian Liu — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:37:46 -0000

While I do understand both the views of Rob and "Random Visitor", I believe that the purpose of releasing in 0.1 was to show proof-of-concept. While the benefits may still not be great, it definitely shows potential for a largely-used framework.

Essentially, they are building a portion of the Contextual Web, albeit very early-stage. With the Semantic Web sitting server-side, the Contextual Web may sit client-side to preserve privacy. Ubiquity may provide necessary contextual information (which may be automated in the future).

Personally, I feel that Ubiquity has large potential and Mozilla made the right move in developing a new platform since the Semantic Web is out of their sandbox.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Random Visitor — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:51:02 -0000

Wow... Just wow. This is by far the most appallig article I've see on Mashable.

"We have taken many steps to put information on the internet in order to get away from the desktop, and this is trying to bring us back to it." Logic... It really doesn't enforce that at all but hints to the opposite. See the subscription model (the name kind of gives it away) for an example. It's Mozilla Labs. You have heard of their projects regarding 'the cloud' and user data?

"I can imagine where this could take us" Obviosly not. Even when it's clearly hinted and quite easy to imagine, somehow the conclusions reached throughout the text land on the exact opposite in almost every case.

"...two years until early adopters can praise it" 2 years. Early adopters. Eh? Pardon, just struck me as funny. Stretching the terms if nothing else.

"make it easier for people to use the Internet as a service" like Twitter? A service? Please. Maybe the context about services and mentioning Twitter right after it threw me off or something. But if Ubiq's whole point isn't just that...

"Obviously, this barely saves any time or mouse
clicks" Rrright. Except it actually does. I can only recommend trying it. I guess it's dangerous to play this card at all but... Try it. Make some actions for it. You could even make it work so that you write "find babel fish" and make it pull results from a lot of search engines (without 'support for Ubiquity' even!). The confusion must arise from not having it built-in. But one doesn't even need that much imagination to see what's already possible.

"All of the examples are this simplistic" Examples are often bad for nonthinkers indeed. Forest, trees.
I just cannot understand how it's not possible to realize what's already possible and what will become possible on the future. Unless of course one skips the intro video, documentation, developer information and some hands-on usage experience?

"Isnâ€™t it easier to create a website that does all of the same things?" Err.. no? Those trees are clouding the view again.

"it takes a little imagination to get there" Please excercize some. Somehow you managed not to get it at all? Or you're merely playing confrontational?

And they definitely need a bigger PLATFORM PREVIEW PREALPHA DEMO label. Hopefully enforced upon people it detects as bloggers/writers/reviewers.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

David — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:51:07 -0000

As an educator I can see its potential for students to harness the web. True Ubiquity is still very young, however the ability for it to do many simple things quickly will be a boon for my students. I hope that it expands far more rapidly than three to five years! My students will love this.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Aashay Desai — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:32:38 -0000

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've never used QuickSilver for Mac, or any of its similar counterparts on other operating systems. Ubiquity is a similar concept.

Oh, and about "summoning" Ubiquity: compare hitting one quick key combo and typing vs. hitting the tab key repeatedly (or reaching for your mouse) to navigate to a toolbar field to type, and you'll understand.

I think it's too early to say Ubiquity might not become ubiquitous. What if Mozilla decides to integrate it in a future relase of Firefox? Only time will tell.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Jay — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:23:21 -0000

One reason to make the browser a platform instead of yetanotherwebpage(tm) is to ensure that _you_ have control over your data and your actions and not someone else.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Jigar Shah — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:00:26 -0000

I don't agree on this. It definately allows me to do things i generally do with plenty of mouse clicks and copy pastes. If you look at first example it has such long operations to be done like
book ticket, then restaurant then mail friends and add appointment plus share this info on say upcoming What if i can do this in just few letters i type here and its done. I think thats the future. As you said can't this be done on a website like i google. I think it can. If you remember yahoo is also planning to do something like this. But it takes freedom of service i want to use. ease at which commands can be added is simply amazing.

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Andrew Finkle — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:36:41 -0000

I'll take the other side here... Why should I need to go to a specific website to use a service like this? I believe that the browser is the one common element we all have to interacting with anything today. This absolutely should work from within a browser.

Don't think of it as the browser being the platform, it is more about being able to access it from where you will be anyway.

This is a great start for a .1 product

Re: Ubiquity Will Not Be Ubiquitous

Paisano® — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:17:30 -0000

â€œearly adopter badge"? lol. Love it. Hey, you can take my â€œearly adopter badge" but you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hand! That's the new credo for the UBA (United Bloggers Association). Ok, no such ass. yet but perhaps someday!

I'm like you...not sure about Ubiq yet. Lots of interesting new concepts and features but the jury is still out on its long-term implication and potential for success.

Good stuff

Pai