YubNub

YubNub is basically a "command line for the web." What this amounts to is that you can type all sorts of commands into its search box and it will automatically perform the Web actions you specify. For example, "g [keyword]" will search Google for your keyword, and "am [keyword]" will search amazon. It's all in the same place, so you don't have to rocket around to all kinds of main pages to do your web searching.

The other reason this is really cool is that it's social. The commands that the inerpreter knows can be created by anybody (the really good ones end up in the golden eggs section). This means that there are a ton of actions, from UPS package tracking to - get this - a feature that makes a computerized voice say anything you feed it (the command is 'tts').

Plus, I was able to use other computer tools in conjunction with it that expand its power even further. Quicksilver is a great tool for Mac OS X that allows you to launch files, control iTunes, send email, and other things from a single keypress. One of its features is that any bookmark you allow it to access (there are plugins for Safari, Firefox/Mozilla, del.icio.us, and other bookmark sets) with "***" in the URL automatically becomes a Web search. I created a del.icio.us bookmark with the URL "http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=***", and now I can enter any YubNub command straight into Quicsilver without even needing to view the YubNub webpage.

I'm excited to see where this goes. By the way, according to the author of the page, "YubNub" is an Ewok term meaning "Hooray!"