The Internet command prompt and (maybe) the Internet clipboard

With the Cloud Computing Paradigm, at least until recent developments, we have only worked with already existing technologies. Most of all, what Cloud Computing paradigm adds is the great feature of concentrating everything in a articulated and integrated way.

To be able to add real value to the Cloud Computing products and solutions we must innovate,  not only in the infrastructural technologies, but also in those who will have direct impact in user experience.  In the time being we already have interoperability technologies,  Identity Management and authorization platforms, great developing tools and deployment platforms, etc, etc.  And what about new functionalities, features that will add real value and will be able to create new kind of user experience? In a recent post Pedro has introduced interesting points about how the Cloud will expand or grow, but I think that we could start by simpler examples.

One thing that I’ve been looking for a long time is the possibility to have a clipboard on the Internet,  i. e., the possibility to copy, paste and move information (documents/files). This is one of the  simpler examples that I could figure out, but it’s a major step forward in the interoperability and user experience field. With this functionality, together with the power deployed by the OpenID and OAuth platforms, users could easily copy  a document from Google documents to their desktop, without the usual download method, and even more important, users could start moving (copy & paste) data among cloud service providers.

Last week, together with Luis, I’ve been exploring the power of the newest  Mozilla Labs plug-in: the Ubiquity. This new amazing plug-in is like a command prompt for the Internet (command prompt also known as a shell or terminal). With it, users will be able to control the web with text commands. Having a command prompt to control the Internet is a great idea,  although, it could be also very terrifying idea ,  specially if we remember how users run away from Dos and Unix command prompts.

With Mozilla Labs Ubiquity you will be able to use predefined commands to do things like: real time and in-line translations, sending emails, attach maps to emails, etc, etc. You can even extend the predefined set of commands using a simple API. For one short example of the Mozilla Labs Ubiquity potentialities please view the following video, and obviously, the better way is to install and use it. In this video I’m using the plug-in to translate a text, taken from a web page,  and to put it in the context of its original web  page (real time and in-line translations).

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Because of its openness and set of potentialities I think that Mozilla Labs Ubiquity is an excellent place to start studying  a way to implement my “Internet clipboard”. Another thing that is very important on this plug-in is its ability to interact with Cloud Computing application. According to the Mozilla Labs team, this plug-in knows how to push a mail to the Gmail interface, or to pull a map from Google maps.

With Mozilla Labs Ubiquity I’m already imagining the following scenario:

1 ) Login to my Google docs apps -> write “copy” on the Ubiquity prompt -> the Ubiquity will show me  a list of my Google docs documents (remember that it knows how to push this information from the cloud) -> I select the one that I want to copy.

2) Login in my Zoho Writer account – > write “paste” on the Ubiquity prompt -> and then there it is, my document moves from Google docs to Zoho Write.

As you can imagine with (1) + (2) we will have the Internet distributed clipboard.

This scenario only demonstrates how even the simpler examples could enhance user experience and create real interoperability among Cloud Computing services. Having a way to copy & paste is just a small step. Service providers must implement other things, like file compatible format, etc. But this kind of things aren’t new, this is a battle that we already have on the desktop environments.

I don’t have the bandwidth to implement this example, although I’ll study further this API and its possibilities. But I hope that the Mozilla guys will like it, and maybe that they will spend some of their time with it.

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