The Usefulness of the Simple Command Line

Sugarcodes is a new site that has extremely basic functionality but, like old-timer YubNub, is an awesome productivity tool for many users. It’s basically nothing more than a command line, where a search of just about any web service can be conducted using a simple dedicated command. “g books” does a search on Google for books. “yt U2″ does a search on YouTube for U2. The convenience is that, once you know the commands, you can do just about anything from that single command line and save the step of going to the site.

We’ve written about YubNub previously, including it mobile features on MobileCrunch. YubNub has the extra functionality to make it really useful – including a browser plugin that saves users even the step of going to the YubNub site. Users can create their own commands as well. Sugarcodes does not yet appear to have a plugin.

These aren’t businesses, but YubNub and Sugarcodes are very handy tools for people who do a lot of web surfing. And the browser real estate cost for the YubNub plugin is minimal.