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Mozilla has launched a public prototype of the Firefox add-on Ubiquity, a very interesting command-based interface that provides an easy way to pull and send data to various online services. For example, users will be able to pull up maps and embed them into emails, translate text, perform searches, lookup words in the dictionary, check the weather, update their Twitter, Digg sites and much more – all using a few keystrokes and without leaving the page they happen to be on. Think Launchy meets web 2.0.

In a video demonstration posted after the jump, Mozilla’s Aza Raskin shows among other things how someone inviting a friend to a restaurant could use Ubiquity to find the location map of the restaurant, edit it and insert it in an email. By typing “yelp” and the name of the restaurant, he could add reviews of the restaurant right into the message.

Lots of commands are available by default, but users can also create their own to interact with pretty much any service that offers an open web API. The official website contains examples, a command list, and information about creating your own commands. I really recommend checking it out.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.