Wow. I'm so lazyweb, I hadn't even written up the post describing the app i wanted, and someone's already gone and built it. Jon Aquino made YubNub, his entry in the Rails Day contest. It's a server-based system for assigning your own keywords for automating queries and searches. Jon describes a bit about the app's creation on his blog.
In my mind, the version of this application I'd want to create would be installable on an intranet, so we could make specific keywords for our environment. (For example, we use FogBugz, so typing in "bug 3524" should go right to that bug's page in the system. The best way to do that, in my mind, would be to have YubNub (or some intranet equivalent) understand Mycroft (or Sherlock) plugins, as well as Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar plugins.
If you could import the XML files that power those search services, it'd be really easy to populate the service or application with a bunch of search syntaxes that are already created.
At any rate, Jon's app is well worth checking out, and I'm sure it'll be evolving to include more features in the future.
You're usually really good at explaining to me what I'm missing, when people are raving about what looks to me like a fragile and wasteful way of doing something that's simple in another way. Could you do that here, please?
Do you really search for bugs by number that often from computers that aren't yours? I'd just do what I've done with Moz's Bugzilla, and bookmark the equivalent of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=%s with the keyword "bug" so that bug 297761 in the location bar takes me there, rather than yubnub.com {enter} {crap} yubnub.org {enter} bug 297761 {crap} sabug 297761, unless I really spent more time on strangers' computers than on my own.
According to this page, the source should be available (useful for your intranet installation) here, although it appears to want a username/password.
Phil: there's a firefox extension available, so you can use all the shortcuts right in the browser - no need to visit yubnub at all. If you only ever use one firefox install, I can definitely see your point that this is unnecessary, but if you have four (like me), a centralized system could be quite handy.
This reminds me of back in the day when I used to hang out on IRC, and every channel had it's own bot (Eggdrop or otherwise). On the more hacker-orientated channels, people would often customise the bot to go off and fetch information of interest, such as tv guides, movie times, news headlines and so forth.
So to me, this is just a bot for the web. :)
If you want to get to FogBugz, then try using this bookmarklet:
javascript:q = prompt(%22Bug#:%22, %22%22); if (q!=%22%22) {q=%22pgEditBug&command=view&ixbug=%22 + q;} else {q=%22pgList%22;} location=%22http://>/fogbugz/default.asp?pg=%22 + q; void 0
Just replace the > with the name of the server your FogBugz is installed on.
It will promt you for a bug number and then take you right to that one. If you don't enter a bug number then it will take you the your last list view.
Not quite built into a command line but an easier way to get to the bug you want!
Ah, it's not that I'm on other people's computers that often... it's that other people in our office are *really* good at scripting and automating things, and I want to benefit from the work they put into automation. We have probably half a dozen folks who've made custom Mozilla search extensions or bookmarklets for this sort of thing, and it makes sense to be able to centralize it.
As much as I love YubNub, I don't see how it's much different than googling hyper-specific queries.