ducky is ... well, the web’s command line. not to be confused with what inspired it, ‘yubnub’, the command line of the web. no, you don’t have to leave the command line for ducky.

ducky marries a bunch of web service APIs into one tool, conventiently callable from the command line. search the web without using a browser.

i really like staying on the command line just to answer a few questions.

the following commands are usable from ducky, and what they mean. you invoke these as the command, it just uses ducky to do the work.

        aadl:   search the ann arbor (mi) public library
        am:     search amazon by keyword
        asin:   search amazon by ASIN
        amuk:   search amazon UK by keyword
        ameu:   search amazon EU by keyword
        amjp:   search amazon japan by keyword
        bdig:   search Blogdigger
        blink:  search BlinkList
        cite:   search CiteULike by tag
        conn:   search Connotea by tag
        day:    search daypop
        del:    search del.icio.us by tag
        deluser: search del.icio.us by a username
        feed:   search feedster by keyword
        fin:    search findory's blog search engine
        fjobs:  search feedster jobs by keywords
        fl:     search flickr by tag
        g:      search google 
        gblog:  search google blogs by keywords
        gnews:  search Google news by keywords
        ice:    search Ice Rocket blog search engine
        ind:    search for jobs via Indeed
        isbn:   search amazon by ISBN
        mp3:    search MP3 blogs
        msn:    search via the MSN engine
        noaa:   weather conditions by airport (US only)
        simp:   search for jobs on Simply Hired
        smug:   search SmugMug by keyword
        tag:    search the folksonomy (tag universe) via gataga
        tec:    search technorati
        tectag: search technorati by tag
        topix:  search topix
        tube:   search YourTube with tags
        ya:     search yahoo
        yblogs: search yahoo blog search
        yfin:   search yahoo finance by ticker symbol
        yjobs:  search yahoo jobs
        ynews:  search yahoo news

this is a simple amazon search for the key words ‘szor’ and ‘virus’.

  Ocho:~/code/ducky jose$ am szor virus
  Book: The Art of  Computer Virus Research and Defense   Price: $32.99
  Author: Peter Szor
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321304543/

you can see more examples at http://monkey.org/~jose/software/ducky/example.html

• cron your web searches
• get news info via email more easily
• hack one search across multiple engines easily

you’ll need the following things to use ducky.

• python 2.2 or later
• web service API keys for google, technorati, amazon, and flickr
• PyXML installed (available by default on OS X)

that’s it. the related libraries used to drive the searches are all included in the package. see the README file for info on where to stash your API keys.

watch here for new versions.

• version 0.9.6 (december 17, 2005): http://monkey.org/~jose/software/ducky/ducky-0.9.6.tar.gz

changes since 0.9.5: added the following commands:

• aadl - searching the ann arbor (mi) district library (thanks emv)
• blink - search the blink blog search engine
• deluser - search delicious by user (thanks emv)
• gblog - search google blogs
• gnews - search google news
• ice - search the ice rocket engine
• mp3 - search mp3blogs
• tectag - search technorati by tag
• tube - search YourTube, the video site
• yblogs - search Yahoo! blogs

see the README for what’s left to do for a 1.0, but also feel free to contribute ideas or code.

right now it doesn’t have a real installer, a big annoyance. anyone who knows Python setup.py files well is asked to help.

– You may be interested in “ULI,” the universal line interface ..! – Lion Kimbro

– Stellar. I think I’ll add ma.gnolia.com search by user .. – cb