YubNub Ruby on Rails Project : Command-line for the Web

June 14th, 2005 | Filed under Tools.

Jonathan Aquino created YubNub as part of the 2005 “Rails Day” 24-hour programming contest where the idea was to make the coolest program in 24 hours, using a programming system called Ruby on Rails.

YubNub is a command-line for the web. So what is YubNub?

“After setting it up on your browser, you simply type “gim porsche 911″ to do a Google Image Search for pictures of Porsche 911 sports cars.”

“Type “random 49″ to return random numbers between 1 and 49, courtesy of random.org. And best of all, you can make a new command by giving YubNub an appropriate URL.”

“On a practical note, I was tired of setting up the same Firefox keywords on each of the 5 computers that I use. By putting my keywords into YubNub, I can hit “am mark twain” for an Amazon search, or “gmap vancouver” for a Google Maps search, no matter which computer I’m on.”

“The beauty of YubNub is that anyone can help to extend it. If there is an existing web service with a submit form, they can add it pretty easily (like I did with the Amazon example above).”

Now that is very creative. See the List of Commands andt here is a Firefox search plugin also.