The Business Pack is aimed for productivity with hooks for news and finance along with Wikipedia, while the Social Pack brings Flickr, YouTube and Twitter on board. The Web Worker will likely need both, and the extension does allow you to customize the interface to choose the desired services.

Using the RoamAbout extension couldn’t be easier. Just select your desired search or action content on any web site and then choose the desired button from the unobtrusive toolbar. A window appears with your contextual content allowing you really convenient access to your other services, all without leaving your source site.

It’s very cool technology and these two Productivity Packs are great examples of what can be done with the open RoamAbout platform. As developers come aboard and extend it further, I can see it becoming exponentially more useful. I’m already compiling a wish list of sites I’d like to see added.

Some of this sort of functionality is available in standalone Firefox extensions but I like the idea of a single app that pulls it all together. It’s lightweight and the integrated toolbar is really handy.

The RoamAbout extension is available for free download for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.