Mozilla launches Ubiquity for user-generated mash-ups

Mozilla hopes to make mash-ups easier with Ubiquity

Mozilla has launched Ubiquity - a new prototype technology designed to enable non-technical users to create mash-ups, thus carrying out web tasks more easily and productively.

Previously, mash-ups could only be created by programmers and application developers, but with this new project Mozilla is aiming to put control back into the hands-of the end users, enabling them to perform tasks such as on-screen translation and searching sites like Google and Amazon.

"Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time," said Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, in a blog posting.

"We’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common web tasks more quickly and easily."

In a video demonstration on the blog posting, Raskin shows how Ubiquity could enable users to create mashups in their email client. A user could easily place a map in their email, for example, by highlighting the item of text denoting a chosen location, calling up the Ubiquity interface, selecting "map" and then " insert map into page".

"The problem with the way the web stands now is that I have to go to services to use them," said Raskin. "What I'd really like to do is have user-generated mashups – mashups that I care about, where I care about them."

Ubiquity 0.1 is available for download immediately and the code for the Ubiquity experiment is being released as open-source software under the GPL/MPL/LGPL tri-license.