If ever something was neither fish nor fowl, it's Goosh, a Web-based command-line interface for Google.
On the one hand, Goosh creator Stefan Grothkopp shows off the power of Web 2.0 applications, with the browser becoming much more than a mere vessel for surfing from one hyperlink to another. People type into the browser window, and Goosh interprets their requests, runs them through Google's services, and displays the result.
With Goosh--short for Google shell--typing "web asparagus" retrieves a textual listing of the top four Google search results for the vegetable. Typing "translate en de cat" returns "Katze." Typing "lucky venerable bede" takes you to the top-ranked search result for the Northumbrian monk and scholar.
On the other hand--it's a command-line interface, for goodness sake!
CLIs are adapted more to the computer's way of thinking than to an average person's. But they continue to thrive with technical folks such as programmers or administrators of Unix and Linux machines. Mac OS X, with Unix underpinnings, has a command line, and Microsoft Windows does, too.
I have a soft spot in my heart for the command line, though my vocabulary is tiny and I'm no great master of piped output. What's potentially more interesting is if, as Mashable suggests, Goosh was endowed with external hooks so it could be usable in instant-messaging or other applications.
I like Goosh, though I have a couple beefs with the beta service. For one thing, it would be nice if there were a blinking cursor after the prompt; I only saw one some of the time. For another, using the "lucky" or "video" command performs some browser slight-of-hand that makes it impossible to go navigate back to Goosh.
Goosh gives a Web-based command-line interface to Google.
(Credit: Goosh)It's clear there's a core group of computer enthusiasts who still love the command line, 1984 Apple advertisements notwithstanding.
Ever notice that most screenshots intended to show off Linux user interface bling still sport a terminal window, usually with some green text on a black background? Or that one of the shiny new technologies coming out of Microsoft is the scripting and command environment called Monad? (It's officially called Windows PowerShell, but I like Monad better.)
The latest example of new-meets-old: the gcalcli command-line interface to Google's online calendar application. It's an open-source utility that lets people read and update Google calendars--either their own or shared ones.
Sure, a lot of people like to point and click, and this whole Internet thing got a big kick in the pants in the 1990s when the World Wide Web put a slick interface on a previously textual experience. But there is a lot of utility to be had from command lines when it comes to programming.
Text is the most flexible programming medium for whipping up scripts to automatically check a calendar at a specified time of the day. You also can show agenda items automatically in a system monitor such as Conky or quickly add calendar items from the command line without having to fire up a Web browser.
Broadcom programmer Eric Davis released the first public version of the software on Monday, and he's updated it once already. It's released under the MIT License and requires Python programming tools and some Python extensions to be installed.
(Via LifeHacker)
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