Lyric search for Ubiquity

Another simple ubiquity command--similar in method to my attempt at nextmuni--to grab song lyrics from astraweb.com. There's a basic alternative version here, but I thought I'd improve slightly on the simple google search (install link at bottom). I've already found this command handy, and it highlights a great benefit to using Ubiquity for quick lookup tasks like this one... avoid ads!

If tools like Ubiquity become popular across the spectrum of online search (as I imagine they will) what's the implication for ad revenue? I'd worry that search sites and hosts for this type of data might try to combat the trend. The two commands I've written so far are extremely tenuous (though much of that is a result of novice javascript use) in the way they grab their data, and it wouldn't take much more than a change of font-size on my chosen lyrics host to kill the command.

If Ubiquity continues ad-free, there isn't much incentive for search engines and data providers to play along. Unfortunately, this may encourage previously "free" ad-funded services to adopt less open monetization models.

• lyric command (again, ubiquity required)

NextMuni for Ubiquity

I took a first run at writing this ubiquity verb mostly out of curiosity. NextMuni is an extremely useful service for even infrequent SF public transit-goers. When things work well, it lets you completely avoid the unfortunate waiting around Divisadero wondering when the 24 is coming.

A number of people have created tools to improve accessibility to the NextMuni service, including Mikhail P's yourmuni which I use constantly and is perfect for frequent commuters with a data phone. As far as I can tell, no one has written a NextMuni command for ubiquity yet, and it seemed an ideal candidate to benefit from command-line access, especially considering the somewhat-clunky interface on the current site.

Writing the command was, indeed, impressively straight-forward. Despite NextMuni's inexplicable lack of an API, extracting the relevant data from the simplified lookup pages was a task well-suited to jquery.

For those interested in trying out this rugged code, it can be subscribed to with the link at bottom. The command has some definite issues (cross streets must be capitalized and there's some flakiness in the preview update that I don't yet understand) but perhaps it will be useful to someone as an example or a tool.

• muni command (hosted at github, requires ubiquity)

Edit: the nextmuni website has changed since the programming of this command, and it is no longer working. Any developers interested in updating the code to work with the new layout are welcome to do so.

ping.fm + ubiquity = crazy handy

I haven't gotten into twitter-style microblogging yet, and one of the reasons is that there are too many overlapping services. I opened a twitter account a year ago, use facebook occasionally, have gmail open constantly, and have friends who frequent just one or two of those. When I feel like sharing a link or a thought with the world at large, I tend to choose one of the three quite arbitrarily and that just seems unfair.

The problem is solved, though.

Ping.fm integrates status messages across facebook, twitter, gtalk and frighteningly many others that I know nothing about. There's a clean mobile and iphone interface, email access, a gtalk bot, and easy ways to target updates to a subset of your status platforms.

Ubiquity is extremely useful on its own (for reasons I won't detail now), and the ping.fm ubiquity command allows command line updates from firefox very gracefully. Crazy handy.

Justifying the utility of status updates in general, however, I'm still working on. One possibility: contributing to real-time data. It's sort of appealing.