Quicksilver

This plugin for Mac changed my life and continues to do so to this day.  As it says on the website “at first glance, Quicksilver is a launcher.”  It allows you to find an application quickly and launch it.  This is the most basic use for it.  It is handy because now I don’t need to have 30 icons on my doc.  Instead I press option+tab, type the first 2-3 letters of the application I want to launch and hit enter.  It’s that simple and takes about a second.  But it’s not a hard coded launcher, it actually indexes your system and searches it.  So say I need to capture some audio to make a new ringtone for myself.  I do this rarely so the apps I use for that are hardly ever used.  I remember the one I use has “audio” in the name somewhere so I type “audio” and it returns a list of the apps containing that text.  Usually exactly what I need is right there ready to launch but in the worst case, couple down arrows and I’m there.  No digging around in finder to find the app.  And it goes further than that, it is not limited to applications it can index your entire system.  So you can find files and folders fast, faster than spotlight in my opinion.

Now the app launching capapbility is alone enough to make this a powerful app.  What’s even better is the plugin’s capability to interact with other applications.  You can do just about anything you can imagine.  You can control iTunes from anywhere with a few shortcuts.  You can send quick IM’s.  You can add things to your GTD app.  You can even set a timer or do calculations with it.  It’s mindblowing the versatility you have with just one shortcut.  I am still an amateur at this, I don’t use it even close to its full potential.  Try it out, you’ll like it.

 Bonus NTICLW: YubNub.org

 YubNub is a quicksearch utility for the web.  It’s just like google but with the addition of search commands.  So say I want to look up snails on wikipedia.  I type in “wp snails” and it goes straight to wikipedia’s page on snails.  There is a command for just about any site you can think of.  The site allows users to create their own so there are about a million to just from.  The ones I use most often are: yt = YouTube , imdb = imdb.com, a = Amazon.  Now the reason why this is a bonus on this post is its amazing interaction with Quicksilver.  Normally I would have to go to my browser, go to YubNub and then search.  But with a QS plugin I can access this from anywhere.  I pull of QS type “yub” and then I can enter my search.  Its so amazing! I’ve already won a few office trivia challenges with this.

 I cannot do either of these utilities justice.  Please visit their sites and try them out.