It's back! C:\

I was reading an interesting note from ResearchBuzz which talked about the addition of special syntax for movie searching.  This is where you can type movie:buffalo or movie:98052 to get listings, etc. The article then goes on to talk about the special and addition ways you can mess with this to get the results you want.

Hmmm.. A brave new world: The Command Line.

Many of you old timers (like me!) will remember that thing called Compuserve (or The Source or Delphi or Prodigy).  In a number of those online systems, American Airlines has introduced the world to Easy Sabre.

For those of you who don't remember black and white TV, dial up, and the Apple ][+,  Easy Sabre was a hook into the airline reservations system for geeks. You got pretty much the same interface that the travel agents got.  It was 'simple' in that if you want to go from Dallas to Seattle on the first of April, in coach, you essentially, from the 'google box' (or command line as we old farts like to call it), typed in a line something like: DFW/SEA/010404/Y/AM  or some such.

You got back flights and you could make reservations, etc.  Of course, Prodigy, AOL, and others slapped a friendly GUI on this and then something called the internet came along.

You know that Aunt Freida (why is it always Millie?) is not going to sit in Google's window and type trip:DFW/SEA, just not gonna happen any more then she is going to type movie:whatever.

Of course people already know that and have already built solutions.

For example, SOOPLE deals with the Google C:\ issue by slapping a front end onto all the syntax and command features of Google.

Made for somebody's mom, it fills the bill and while maybe not a VC investment, does show that by watching carefully, you can pick up on trends and all the 'new' things that will be required.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go dust off my Hayes Modem.

Comments

[Steve Meyer]

Time to get back out my ARCNET NICs and Hubs.
Long live the command line!

Great article.