Time tracking blog

A couple of weeks ago I took a look at Google’s Chrome browser and it’s ‘interesting’ EULA, and if it was right for enterprise users.  As with most products that come out of Mountain View, Google stole the show from an otherwise equally interesting product designed to not only make you more productive, but in a fun and easy to use format: Mozilla Lab’s Ubiquity.

Plain and simple, Ubiquity is an experimental Firefox extension that bills itself as “a powerful new way to interact with the web.”  After using ubiquity for a few weeks now, I say that’s a bit of an understatement.  For those of you on OSX, think of ubiquity as a Quicksilver, but for the entire internet.  For those of you on windows, think of it as, ummm..well, like something you’ve never seen before!

While a good friend and colleague has been extolling the virtues of semantic web to me for years now, I’d yet to see a ‘well functioning, real world’ example.  Quite simply, we’ve all be raised on the standard point and click, drop down menu, long URL strings way of doing business.  Ubiquity seeks to change all that through a highly intuitive interface.  For example, when I find an article like this one, and want to digg it, I normally have to search for a digg button somewhere on the page, clicky clicky, etc., or have to copy the URL myself, navigate to digg, login, paste the URL, click submit.  Ubiquity?  “digg this”.  Done.

With Ubiquity,  semantic web just made one small step for computers, and one giant leap for computing.  By recognizing the phrase “this”, we’ve just connected the word to a variety of input mechanisms.  Granted, this seems like an incredibly simple solution, but until now there really hasn’t been the correlation between “What I’m looking at right now” and “input”.

OK, so what’s the big deal?  What’s ubiquity going to do for me?  Well, glad you asked friend, step right up to one of the most powerful moves in productivity in years.  Ubiquity will do just about anything you tell it to, and how!  Not so hot on your one line command writing skills?  Me neither, so without further adieu, some common and helpful ubiquity productivity tools:

To summon ubiquity to your service: Alt/Option + Spacebar

Email this:  Here’s a great time saver.  Let’s say you just found a really great article about Time Tracking software and want to send it over to Jim in accounting.  Normally, this would require a copy of the URL, a trip over to the email client, new message, Jim, subject line, paste URL, click send.   With Ubiquity open, simply type email this to (contact), and Ubiquity launches gmail, inserts the correct address and, subject line and text.  Time saved?  Approximately 20-30 seconds.  Not a big deal right off the bat, but think about how many emails you send per day.  The time savings begin to add up quite quickly.

Define:  As seasoned a wordsmith as I am, even I, dear readers, come across a phrase every now and then, when I think, is that REALLY the correct meaning?  Or better yet…what the heck does that mean?  Simply type Define in Ubiquity and either jump to answers.com, or give ubiquity a second to call answers.com and deliver the definition of the word right there in your ubiquity window.  Quite handy when readying legal or technical documents.

Wikipedia: Who doesn’t love Wikipedia?  For all the strengths and weaknesses, Wikipedia is still packed with an amazing amount of information.  Instead of surfing over to the big W everytime you want to do a bit of research, bring up ubiquity and simply type w.  Ubiquity calls Wiki and delivers an astonishing amount of information on the word you’ve highlighted in the webpage, or any other phrase you choose to enter.

Map:  Whoa nelly!  If I had to rank a favorite feature thus far, Ubiquities’ mapping features would take the cake.  This one is a major time saver and productivity tool.  Need to find the address of that widget company in a hurry?  Bring up ubiquity, enter the map command, and type the name of the business.  Sometimes this works, sometimes not.  The other solution is to find the company address somewhere on the site (usually under the ‘contact’ page), highlight the address, open ubiquity and enter the map command.  Google maps will deliver up a fresh and tasty map of the location.

But wait…there’s more.  Simple mapping of a location within Ubiquity might not save you a bunch of time, but what if you could enlarge that map to get a better view, drop it into an email, AND attach a restaurant review?  With Ubiquity, all this can be done with a simple few clicks.  If you’re on a regular HTML page, the ‘insert into page’ option is obviously not going to work, but if you’ve already opened an email to a friend with ubiquity, you’re then in an ‘editable’ HTML section on a page.  In other words, dropping a map into an email now can be done in a few clicks instead of the previous 5 minutes it took prior to ubiquity being on the scene.

So what’s the big deal?  If these few examples haven’t started you thinking about shaving seconds, minutes, hours off regular everyday tasks, keep in mind that Ubiquity is still in the ‘experimental’ phase, meaning alpha, beta at best.  Given Mozilla’s open source philosophy, the additional uses and functionality are limited only by user’s creativity and need.  Speaking of which, the Herd has already sprung up, and is addressing the collective as a one stop shop for safe Ubiquity scripts (I’m already using the facebook scripts with delight).  Is Ubiquity perfect?  Far from it.  There are still a number of holes in the dam that need plugging, and it’s certainly got room to grow before anyone calls it a finished product.  But, right out of the gate ubiquity is saving time and endless searching all from within your current browser.

Give Ubiquity a download and a go.  It’s going to take a few hours to get used to, but once you do, it can be a massive time saver, and a great productivity tool.  Hey TLabs guys…how about a Ubiquity script that will allow me to clock in/out and switch job codes?