Ambedo Blog

Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts

2005-12-20T21:02:00.000+01:00

Yahoo today launched their Open Shortcuts. It is basically a light version of Ambedo and Yubnub. The features are best described in their FAQ but it works like Yubnub but with all shortcuts starting with ! followed by the command and possibly a parameter. Example: "!amazon kingkong" would search Amazon.com for "kingkong". You can also read some more about it over at SearchEngineWatch.

Here's my short analysis if the service. Of course it is very biased since I like Ambedo a lot.

You have to be logged in
To use Yahoo's shortcuts you have to be logged in. With Yubnub you always access all commands immediately without logging in. Ambedo allows you to access your tags with a bookmarkable page that allows you to use tags, but not edit them.

Missing instant feedback
This is a problem with both Yubnub and Yahoo. You do not no for sure what will happen before you type a command (if you even remember it). Power users (which are the likely usage group) will have loads of commands and require instant feedback that they indeed have entered the correct command and what will happen before hitting enter to execute. Ambedo does all its tag matching on the client side (it is in fact not ajax as many people think), providing instant feedback before executing on a tag.

Cannot use multiple commands
With Yahoo it's not possible to create two shortcuts with the same name that go to different sites, or possibly where one shortcut accesses the search engine and the other one goes to the site's homepage. Ambedo lets you create multiple tags with the same name that do different things and letting you easily decide what happens client side before it happens.

There is nothing social about it
Yahoo's service is quite boring as there is nothing social in it. Yubnub takes it to the extreme and all commands are shared with everyone, that is you can't have your own personal commands. Ambedo does it differently and provides a directory where you can share your tags with other people and use theirs, but you don't "pollute" your own search box's "tagspace".

Good help and FAQ
There is something that is much better at Yahoo and that's their documents describing the system and explaining how to use it. Ambedo and to some extent Yubnub can improve in this areas.

Missing multiple parameters
Had I created a service like this today, I sure would have created multiple parameter support from the start, something that both Ambedo and Yahoo is missing. (It is since long on my todo list for Ambedo.)

There is nothing new
The release of Yahoo's shortcuts is quite boring, there is nothing new to it! They should have taken Yubnub's and Ambedo's concept and added some new cool feature to it.

Pattern detection
Things that I just love about Ambedo, and use every day, is the pattern detection. Enter a domain name and you can do Whois, Alexa lookup, DNS report etc on the domain instantly. It works for other things such as ISBN's and math as well. It is one of the most useful and important features of "the smart search box" imho.

Works in all search boxes
They say that the shortcuts should work in all their search boxes which should be great if that is correct. Does the browser toolbar work then as well? That's one of the things people are asking for Ambedo to have as well. Anyone interested can in fact implement it themselves since Ambedo populates the search box based on the q parameter.

Released too fast?
Yahoo owns really cool properties such as del.icio.us and runs its own MyWeb services. Why did they not connect the shortcuts to those systems? That would make a nice and cool service but now it is like they're having three systems that are similar without an idea what they're doing. Yahoo needs their own project Fusion perhaps?

I'm sure there are other things that I've missed here, but these are the things that come to mind right now. I've been saying it for quite some time now, but there is a cool feature coming to Ambedo really soon. Perhaps during the Christmas holidays if I get some spare time.

Basic bugs fixed

2005-11-22T21:02:00.000+01:00

Finally fixed the bug so that pages that require login actually redirect much faster. I never noticed since I've always been logged in. But that was a serious bug and a lot of people must have had problems because of it. Too bad that it's often hard to find the "little" bugs (this was a one line fix).

And yes, there will be some nice, really nice, new functionality soon!

Blummy is nice

2005-10-24T22:59:00.000+02:00

Found a new little tool today called blummy. I first had a hard time understanding what it was, the description is a bit confusing but the functionality is great. You probably know about bookmarklets, small pieces of Javascript you can save as a bookmark to quickly access some functionality. (Ambedo has bookmarklets to easily tag search engines.) Well, Blummy is a tool that lets you host your bookmarklets online and easily access them from any computer, through a bookmarklet of course. Also there is a directory where you can share your bookmarklets (or blumlets as they are called). Ambedo users can go grab Ambedo's blumlets, they're ready for use.

Really nice work by Alexander Kirk!

What is a blog without posts?

2005-10-24T22:57:00.000+02:00

Nothing. I am ashamed. Why have a blog when you don't blog... Anyway not much has happened with Ambedo lately so I haven't blogged. However, there are a few things on its way so hopefully you can read something interesting here soon.

TrimPath - Interesting Javascript code

2005-07-19T22:03:00.000+02:00

The O'Reilly Radar wrote about the TrimPath project. It looks like some really interesting Javascript code. Thers is a template engine, a query language, a spreadsheet application, and more. All in Javascript.

Is RSS the TCP/IP Packet of Web 2.0?

2005-07-19T21:47:00.000+02:00

Babak Nivi is writing an interesting series about RSS and its role as TCP/IP of Web 2.0. In the latest installment about Yubnub I made a comment outlining some of the differences between Ambedo and Yubnub. They are:

Everyone has their own “tagspace”. This means users can have their own tags and decide for themselves what a certain tag should do. So you basically avoid collisions. Still though there is a directory where you can share your tags and also import someone elses. With your own tagspace you can also use it for bookmarks stored on Ambedo. These can then handle things like logins or other repetitive tasks which you easily can access through a customized url.
It is based entirely client side - all your tags are loaded immediately in compact JS. With this it is very easy to see exactly what is going to happen before you hit enter.
There are features other than tags/commands. There is a built-in calculator and also detects patterns such as urls, isbns, domains, ip addresses etc. This makes it handy for most day to day tasks for me at least. I can type almost anything I want and get it done immediately with Ambedo.

Two feeds and counting

2005-07-19T21:40:00.000+02:00

What is a website without some XML feeds? Not much these days. This blog already has an Atom feed. Today Ambedo's latest tags page got a RSS feed so you won't miss a single new tag that is added to the directory. I'll add a feed of directory searches later on as well. Any other feeds you think Ambedo needs? Let me know.

Better login

2005-07-18T22:40:00.000+02:00

I finally came around and fixed the login functionality of Ambedo. Now you no longer have to login and hit back and reload after logging in to do what you planned to do. After logging in you will be forwarded to what you intended to do. The site should now operate like a site actually should operate. Coding things like this is really boring but still something a site just has to have. I have a few other items like this on my todo list for Ambedo which I'll get around doing some day.

It try to mix the boring things (like this login stuff) with the fun things such as playing with PHP's object autoloading. Too bad the PHP installed isn't version 5, I couldn't do the fun things I wanted to do. I really like Perl's autoloading and wanted to see what's possible to do in that area with PHP and doing something smart with the classes that map to databases. I've been looking for something like Ruby on Rails for PHP, but haven't found it.

Better directory and helpful texts

2005-07-18T20:52:00.000+02:00

There hasn't been much coding on Ambedo lately but now I've fixed the directory so that it is better. It now only lists tags when you actually search or browse for them. Also added a bunch of helpful links and texts across the site which hopefully will make it easier for people other than me to use the site and understand what it's all about. Feel free to let me know what else I can do to make Ambedo easier to use and understand. I use the site as my start page and it saves my loads of time every day. I really wish Ambedo would help other people as much.

Ambedo needs its own logo

2005-07-12T20:40:00.000+02:00

L.P. Naidu was nice enough to point out that Ambedo needs its own distinct logo. He's right - Ambedo only has a simple written logo with a standard font. Too bad I can't draw at all. If anyone has suggestions or would like to help out with a logo let me know.

Get lots more tags - fast

2005-07-04T21:21:00.000+02:00

Added another small feature today. By going to settings and changing the option "Include all directory tags in my account" to "Yes", you can include every unique tag from the directory to work in your "tag space". It is sort of a feature to import all tags, but without them showing up on the edit tags page.

Yubnub + Ambedo

2005-07-04T19:32:00.000+02:00

After mailing with Yubnub's Jon a bit I added some features that makes it possible to integrate the two sites a bit.

Ambedo can now support a "q" parameter which will preset the search form with the parameter's value. So you can link to Ambedo like this: "ambedo.com/?q=hello". That way you can create a Yubnub command, toolbar, or whatever to work with Ambedo.
A Yubnub tag has been added to Ambedo's default tag set. Try typing "yubnub ls" to get a list of Yubnub's commands.

Drop me a line here or through Ambedo's feedback form if you have other suggestions.

Feature update

2005-06-27T21:47:00.000+02:00

Some small things were fixed today:

You can now change your password on the settings page. Just type settings and hit enter to access that page.

The input box on Ambedo's frontpage has been changed to prevent browser auto-complete. Thanks Martin!

A lot of people have provided great feedback the past weekend. Thanks to all of you and if you have anymore suggestions just let me know. I'll do my best to implement as much as I can.

Stealth start-ups

2005-06-26T23:01:00.000+02:00

Mark Fletcher wrote about Stealth start-ups awhile ago and I agree with it entirely. The release of Yubnub, Ambedo, and now the Google command line shows exactly that many people work on similar ideas at the same time and it is just a matter who releases first. Neither site works perfectly does a bit different things, and probably get a lot of good feedback. Those of you who have read backwards in this blog know that Ambedo has been up and running quite some time before letting anyone else on the site. I've been using Ambedo as my start page for many months. I have the same experience with the last site I launched, Luftgrop.com, a Swedish travel comparison site. At that time the idea was new and Qixo and FareChase launched almost at the same time.

Wrong description of Ambedo?

2005-06-22T22:43:00.000+02:00

Tim Yang thinks Ambedo has the wrong description. Perhaps that is true, Ambedo does not use tags the way del.icio.us does but is that the only correct way to do tags? I prefer to call it search engine tagger to "command line for the web" that Yubnub does. However I do think that search engine tagger is a bit limiting - you can do much more with Ambedo than just tag search engines. I have tagged login pages so I don't have to enter login and password everytime I want to login on a site. Ambedo just makes things easier...

Latest tags listing

2005-06-22T22:32:00.000+02:00

Also added a simple page to list the latest tags added to the directory. You can also access it by typing latest. Guess I should create an RSS feed of this.

Added some stats

2005-06-22T22:22:00.000+02:00

Added a page with statistics to Ambedo. You can type stats or click the stats link in the footer. So far only number of members, tags, tags in directory, and number of searches the past day. Will include more later on. Let me know what kind of stats you'd want...

Rico - An Ajax toolkit

2005-06-21T21:10:00.000+02:00

Found a nice Ajax toolkit (which I've been looking for some time) called Rico released by Sabre. Haven't tried it so far but the demos and code samples like nice. Will have to play with it sometime and see what it can do. An initial look at the code however shows that it is around 60k which is still too much for many users. A plugin or split file approach like we've done with overLIB would be nice.

Link through Gary Potter at Sabre.

Directory fix

2005-06-21T20:21:00.000+02:00

I fixed the directory to correctly display if a tag is a plain bookmark or a search engine that takes parameters.

Password recovery

2005-06-19T16:15:00.000+02:00

Also add the little feature to have a new password sent to you when you've lost your old one. Probably should write some code to actually change your password as well.

Directory and more...

2005-06-19T16:13:00.000+02:00

Finally came around and wrote the code required for the directory functionality of Ambedo. You can now share your tags (type settings and you can turn this off) with other people in the directory (type directory to browse or type search with a query). There you can also import other people's tags into your own "namespace" from the directory.

Yubnub

2005-06-19T16:11:00.000+02:00

Found a site similar to Ambedo this weekend. YubNub calls itself a social command line for the web. Glad to find other sites similar to Ambedo. That probably shows that the idea isn't all bad...

ZoomInfo and Ambedo's bookmarklet

2005-04-05T21:54:00.000+02:00

I just love the Ambedo bookmarklet - makes it so easy to add search engines. I just added ZoomInfo (a people search engine).

Jux2

2005-04-05T21:46:00.000+02:00

Jux2 is a meta search engine with a bit of a twist. It searches Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves but allows you to see what all (overlapping) search engines found or what a search engines is missing and so on. What you should use it for is a different matter.

Google Maps and Flickr Memory Maps

2005-04-05T21:40:00.000+02:00

Google added satellite images to their maps product. That's a really nice feature but it only works in the US (which is really bad!). The maps created a cool new Flickr features called Memory Maps where you map your childhood memories onto a satellite image.