TechCrunch » YubNub

The Usefulness of the Simple Command Line

Michael Arrington — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 09:49:39 +0000

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.

Revisiting YubNub

Michael Arrington — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:18:08 +0000

I wrote about Jon Aquino’s YubNub back on June 13. It was just two days after I started the blog, and so not many people read that post.

Lot’s of people know about YubNub though. It is an “Internet command line” that allows anyone to create a new function and access other web services from the YubNub command line. A command consists of at least two pieces of information – an application identifier and a specific command.

Some of the more popular commands are here. Don’t see the command you need? Create your own. Want to use YubNub without going to the site? Install the plugin and skip a few steps.

Oliver Starr wrote about YubNub today on MobileCrunch, including a look at its uses on a mobile browser.

YubNub Profile

Michael Arrington — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 23:53:15 +0000

Company: YubNub

What is it?

At first glance this looks sort of like a search engine or something, but its not. It is way neater than that. YubNub is a “command line for the web” and was built with Ruby on Rails. What this means is that you can access web applications (like google, amazon, and everything else) via the command box on YubNub’s website. A command consists of at least two pieces of information – an application identifier and a specific command.

For instance, if you type in “flkall ireland”, YubNub will redirect you to the flickr website and show pictures with the tag “ireland”.

There are a ton of commands available and functionality to create new ones directly by users.

You can also use YubHub as a Firefox extension and other ways.

Favorite Commands:

flkall – shows flickr phots with all tags entered
GMT – find local time and date in entered location
mini – turn a long URL into a short one using minilink.org
pod – search for podcasts on Podcast Alley.
quote – get a stock quote, just enter the symbol
say – to “say” everything entered after “say” Example
An alias for “tts”
areacode – Lookup a city by area code. US only. Thx Verizon.
jobs – Performs a search at Indeed.com for available jobs that include the keywords provided.
For a current list of all commands, click here

Screen Shot:

Founder:

Jonathan Aquino

Relevant Links:

Jonathan Aquino’s Blog
Infectious Greed on YubNub
Battelle on Yubnub