Comments on: The Unofficial Google Shell

The Unofficial Google Shell

sdodd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:52:24 -0800

Hey, command-line nerds! You shell geeks over there! Switch over to your browser and go to goosh.org right now.

A couple things to try first (type everything after the ">"): > place 6266 W Highway 290, Austin, TX 78735 > news mcclellan > o 1 > web mcclellan > images firefox fox That's right, it's a command-line interface to Google in your browser. You're welcome.

By: maudlin

maudlin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:55:59 -0800

Somewhere, Neal Stephenson just felt a thrill going up his leg.

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:59:26 -0800

This is pretty interesting.

By: Xoebe

Xoebe — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:05:37 -0800

I think it's swamped, I am getting timeout errors.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:09:26 -0800

Nifty. Though I'm yet to quite work out why....

By: meehawl

meehawl — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:12:02 -0800

Needs vi mode.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:12:34 -0800

Pretty slick. Really, they should have a Telnet interface, though.

By: sdodd

sdodd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:20:35 -0800

Kadin2048, look at the image and map results. That wouldn't work in a Telnet session.

By: tkolar

tkolar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:23:36 -0800

I think we all knew that GUIs were a passing fad.

By: googly

googly — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:26:17 -0800

Meh. I won't be impressed until they map google to an interface that uses cuneiforn on stone tablets.

By: serazin

serazin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:28:20 -0800

I totally don't get it. Can someone explain for the morons in the house, please?

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:32:26 -0800

Very cool...

By: xorry

xorry — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:34:26 -0800

guest@goosh.org:/web> images firefox fox | wc -l just returned a bunch of images ... pos..

By: xorry

xorry — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:34:51 -0800

seriously though, fun!

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:43:27 -0800

Yeah it's a bit Slashdotted. An hour and a half ago I was using it and loving it because it was so much faster than native Google. Now it's taking about 30 seconds to get search results back to me. I'm hoping people will get bored with it. Also, it needs a green-on-black colour scheme.

By: Grimp0teuthis

Grimp0teuthis — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:44:26 -0800

Nice! Wish it displayed more than 4 results at a time, though. Also: press up the up arrow to access your previous commands and use tab to autocomplete :D

By: sdodd

sdodd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:52:53 -0800

Yeah, I should have provided more context for the non-nerds. Before it was common to have Graphical User Interfaces (the Window-Icon-Menu-Pointer metaphor) for interacting with computers, the norm was to issue commands by typing in a program's name along with arguments to modify its behavior. This dates back to teletypes -- that is, before computers had monitors. The program that received your input was called a "shell." Today that program runs in its own window on the screen and is called a terminal. The prompt, command, and its arguments are called "the command line." A minority of computer users spend a significant percentage of their day issuing commands in a terminal window. While the disadvantages versus GUIs are obvious, the command line has some subtle advantages that may be difficult to appreciate without first gaining familiarity with that mode of interaction. This website brings some of those advantages to the one application/service I wish I could use from the command line: Google's search engine.

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:59:35 -0800

A minority of computer users spend a significant percentage of their ~~day~~ life issuing commands in a terminal window.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:59:42 -0800

That's pretty slick there.

By: meehawl

meehawl — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:07:29 -0800

I had the pleasure once of logging into and working on an ancient PDP-11 hooked up to an actual line printer/teletype machine. The noise was deafening, and kind of sexy. This web page needs a sound effect option for maximum retro verisimilitude.

By: sdodd

sdodd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:19:45 -0800

Yeah, xorry, integration with a local instance of bash would be cool, but integration with Yahoo Pipes or the equivalent is what's got me drooling. (Seeing as how the Pipes-and-Filters architectural pattern is maybe the chief advantage of the command line.)

By: hwestiii

hwestiii — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:21:37 -0800

Here's a browser based implementation of vi using javascript. I'd love to see the mash-up of these two, but I don't think I'd know where to begin.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:39:21 -0800

what kind of extensions does "load" load?

By: RavinDave

RavinDave — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:40:36 -0800

Ooops ... I tried to read my mail with the "rm" command and just deleted Google. They got backups, right?

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:44:31 -0800

guest@goosh.org:/web> sudo porn 1) How To Hide Your Porn | Mac Geekery You can just go in terminal, then change to Super User: sudo, then, move your "porn" folder to /var/root/ or /var. So everythine you need it, ... http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/how_to_hide_your_porn

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:49:46 -0800

Jeez quonsar, don't tell everyone....

By: Grimp0teuthis

Grimp0teuthis — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:52:27 -0800

Ooh, ooh, ideafilter: load up Goosh in Mozilla Prism to make it seem even more terminal-like!

By: Chuckles

Chuckles — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:00:10 -0800

Do I have to link to Dave's Quick Search Deskbar again?

By: sdodd

sdodd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:08:58 -0800

Yeah, Chuckles, the Deskbar (and similar apps) only launch a search, they don't display the results inline. Being able to scroll up to previous results is really nice -- it breaks the browser history in a useful way. The Goosh integration with the browser is arguably better; e.g., "> o 1" opens a new tab.

By: middleclasstool

middleclasstool — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:11:55 -0800

Oh me oh my this is fun. How do you get more than four results?

By: middleclasstool

middleclasstool — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:14:23 -0800

Ah, "more!"

By: wtdoor

wtdoor — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:36:03 -0800

I have a really lazy way to use Google from a shell:


cat > google << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
w3m http://www.google.com/search?q=$1
EOF
chmod +x google
./google foo+bar+baz

Now I'm tempted to flesh it out into something more useful. Except that that would be, y'know, work. But I'm sorely tempted, because this is really cool.

By: Zed_Lopez

Zed_Lopez — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:53:48 -0800

By: gum

gum — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:20:44 -0800

This is just terrific. I'm going to start using the Internet again.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:21:56 -0800

If I can get my gmail in elm... well I don't know what I'd do.

By: king walnut

king walnut — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:28:58 -0800

This is awesome. Somebody ought to put a web page front end on this thing.

By: Lazlo

Lazlo — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:56:56 -0800

I think this is just a front end to Google SMS.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:31:55 -0800

I honestly don't see the point in command-line access via HTML. Maybe if it was a VT100 terminal, or something...

By: majick

majick — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:57:40 -0800

"If I can get my gmail in elm... well I don't know what I'd do." Elm Millennium Edition has POP and IMAP support. Or you could just use regular Elm and fetchmail, which is how people did POP in the olden days anyway. "I honestly don't see the point in command-line access via HTML" Yeah. I was hoping there'd be a source tarball of an actually useful utility, but instead it's just another nifty browser toy. That's a shame. "w3m http://www.google.com/search?q=$1" Hm. I'm getting an idea, but I hate writing SOAP code. Decisions, decisions.

By: chips ahoy

chips ahoy — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:00:32 -0800

Needs Commodore interface. LOAD "BAR JOKES",8,1

By: majick

majick — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:16:03 -0800

LOADING
READY.
LIST

0              GOOGLE/64
11 "AHAJOKES.COM    " PRG
7  "DREAMHAVEN.ORG  " PRG
42 "COMEDY-ZONE.NET " PRG
585 BLOCKS FREE.
READY.

By: Archers of Loaf

Archers of Loaf — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:01:53 -0800

Anyone know what the commands for the different languages are? t jp en 頭の滝オフしてほしい does not result in anything.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:03:24 -0800

In the beginning was the command line. Also a little later.

By: freebird

freebird — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:03:53 -0800

Hmm - but it doesn't give me the one thing GUIs and Web 2.0 never quite can: simple composition of simple tools.

By: SciencePunk

SciencePunk — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:46:41 -0800

I am totally underwhelmed.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:14:09 -0800

hmmmm.... I like CLI's, I use them daily, and I'm just not getting a thrill out of this. There's stuff a GUI, even a mostly textual GUI like Google's page, is just plain good at. If it included scripting functions, incorporated regular expressions, etc it might be more nifty, but basically its identical to using google's front page, except you only see four results at a time.

By: no_moniker

no_moniker — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:00:25 -0800

I couldn't get Japanese translations to work either. The examples show you're using the syntax correctly, Archers, and stuff like t en de translate me to german works. Maybe jp isn't the right switch for Japanese or it isn't supported?

By: no_moniker

no_moniker — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:06:54 -0800

Turns out the Japanese is ja not jp. Using that works.

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:51:37 -0800

I'm experimenting with this as my start page for a while. Thanks.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:54:34 -0800

Well, I think it's awesome.

By: Grimp0teuthis

Grimp0teuthis — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:18:42 -0800

Firefox users, get your darker versions here.

By: ilike

ilike — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:45:28 -0800

Suprisingly this is very handy!