Having specific key words has both a positive and negative effects. The positive being that this seems like a more frequently used word than image or url so the probability of errors occurring are less likely. But by making more keywords if the problems do occur now conflicts arise from each of those keywords.

I like Gerv’s idea of ths and hm but I am more favored to thiss and himm. I have gotten used to this on the iPhone, and although not very discoverable, it is very memorable (as I use it for getting we’ll instead of well). This seems like a solution for a more technically savvy user though as I also use it in things like textExpander. Although I feel that this should be the demographic ubiquity targets, if these features will eventually be added to the awesome bar then I feel that Aza’s recommendation fits a more general audience.

email “I think this website alot” to john

That’s quite a simple solution.
Also, natural language interpretation is always going to be difficult, so maybe you need to set a grammar for Ubiquity, that keywords aren’t allowed in the middle of random strings. You can add rules to the language to be used. If someone tries one form and it doesn’t work, then they’re smart enough to rephrase it.

that makes the modifiers discoverable, but what about having to press the right arrow key to see the suggestions, that’s not discoverable. Why not show an image of the right arrow key above the first modifier, then the more the user uses the right arrow key the fainter it gets until it doesn’t appear at all.

Could the right arrow key be pressed again to select the “from” modifier instead of “to”, swapping them over? What happens if there are three or more modifiers, how do you know which will be brought across next? what if you select past the modifier you want, can you select the previous one? I’m assuming the left-arrow key would just move the cursor, maybe ctrl+z, or would they cycle so you have to go full circle.

How about if the cursor is at the far right but not after whitespace pressing the right-arrow selects the first modifier that the preceeding word fragment matches the start of. So if you your example the user typed “f” and hit the right arrow it would bring from across. As the user is type if the start of a modifier matches the word fragment before the cursor that word fragment could be highlighted in bold so the user knows which modifier pressing the right-arrow will select.

As said above this could relate to url, selection, image, etc

You let the user chose as they type but the default changes as you collect the responses.

It could be done based on the probability of choice given context p(c|magic word, preceding words).

An HMM could be used to estimate that.

Obviously this would only help when users repeat the same actions. I don’t know if it’s generally the case.

Also, I was frustrated by the map command and I was told to take it up with you guys. ;) (Basically, I wanted to get directions w/ map, but since there was no directions choice on the preview pane, I tried to go to the Gmaps site from the preview pane, but clicking on the Google logo didn’t work, and I didn’t know I had to hit enter b/c all the rest of the map stuff was clicking. The randomness of click-based commands and type-y commands is sometimes disorienting! :(

I think the solution you have is an elegant one, with one caveat. The pronouns themselves can mean way too many different things in my mind (regardless of what limitations you impose on the meaning in Ubiquity). I feel like that’s the reason I’ve never used them. (hopefully, I need to go back and check my tweets now to see if something got unintentionally replaced!)

I think about the things that ‘this’ could refer to and what comes to mind are: ‘this page’ (that I’m currently on, I may be interested in the URL or the entire contents of the page), and ‘this selection’ (which may be text or an image, and may or may not be hyperlinked).

I feel like a two-word solution feels pretty natural.

“Download these links”
“edit this image”
“Bookmark this page”
“email this page to him”

But, that’s two words, and probably has it’s own drawbacks. Another solution would be to say pronouns are too vague and have magic nouns instead.

“Download links”
“edit image”
“Bookmark url”
“email url to him”

Granted, that language sounds a little stunted, but the meaning is clear from each phrase. “This” would be understood, or could possibly be typed and ignored.

But as for the phone-like predictive text ui you mocked up. It does seem like it would be a pretty natural-feeling interaction, as I sit here and mime it out on my keyboard a few times.