Most of you may or may not know about this cool little function in Google Chrome that lets you create shortcuts to websites and places them on your desktop, start menu & taskbar. I will show you how to use this function in  Windows 7 using the superbar and Launchy.

First fire up Google Chrome and navigate to the site you wish to create a shortcut for. On the top right corner of the Chrome browser click on the icon next to the little spanner.

Now  click on “Create application shortcuts..” and you will see this:

Chrome gives you the option to create this shortcut on your Desktop, Start menu & Taskbar. Make sure you check start menu, and taskbar. If the icon dosent appear in the taskbar repeat the steps and pick desktop, drag and drop the icon/s onto the task bar. As you can see I’ve decided to create shortcuts for Gmail, Twitter and WordPress.

Here is where the new taskbar features come in. Lets say I am working on Word and I want to open up my twitter webpage and check my mail. Do i open up Chrome, navigate to gmail, open a new tab and sign into twitter? Nope i can hit the Windows key + 3 and Windows key + 4 to open up Twitter and Gmail. For those of you don’t know you can fire up the applications on your taskbar by hitting the Windows key + 1,2 3… depending on their position starting from the left.

Ok so thats one way. For those of you that read my previous post about GnomeDo and Launchy there is another way.

Bring up Launchy by hitting alt+space bar, now right click on Launchy and select rebuild catalog:

Give Launchy a few moments to index the newly created shortcuts and then away you go. Type in gmail and you should see this:

Same can be done to bring up any other shortcuts you’ve made, but make sure the catalog is rebuilt after adding new shortcuts.

So thats it. You now have two new ways of opening your favorite sites with ease.

One thing you cant do, unfortunately, is to convert the Chrome windows into tabs or pull up the address bar and navigate to other sites unless you follow links on the webpage you are currently viewing. Apart from that this little feature is extremely useful!

Happy browsing everybody

GNOME Do is an awesome app that i stumbled upon some time back which runs on any major Linux distro. Basically GNOME Do lets you launch applications, browse the web, calculate, look up definitions,bring up terminal etc.., search your file system and Google (maps,docs,contacts etc) plus a whole lot of other stuff, all without going through menus and folders. So its an app that lets you DO things easily. Check out the video(thanks dedm0nds):

To bring up the Do app you press the super(windows) button and the spacebar.

GNOME Do comes packed with a heap of useful plugins. You can choose the plugins you want with a few clicks and you are ready to go. My favourite plugin  feature that i find absolutely handy is the microblogging feature. You can hook up your twitter account and tweet using the Do interface!. How easy is that, no need to launch any desktop apps or login to twitter through the webpage, just hit the super + space and tweet!

Unfortunately, GNOME Do is not available for windows… yet. However i found an equally good app for Windows,  called Launchy. Pretty much the same as GNOME Do, you can still tweet as well but you need to download the plugin first so clicky clicky. just download the file and extract it to the folder where Launchy is installed and you are good to go. (default keystrokes to bring up Launchy in windows is alt-space). know how in vista and win7 to bring up the task manager you have to hit ctrl-alt-del then start the taskmanager from the lockscreen? yea. you dont have to do that anymore. Just bring up Launchy and and type in taskmgr, n presto!. the more you use Launchy fewer keystrokes need to be hit before your frequently used apps come up.

Both of these apps are open source so go ahead and get em!

You can find GNOME DO here and Launchy here

Complete guide to installing and running gnome do available here

I am sure this hasn’t occurred to many of us, but we spend a lot of time browsing directories. This used to drive me insane. Not anymore.

Enter Launchy. Where have YOU been all my life?!? Launchy is a neat, simple freeware launcher. It allows you to launch just about anything–applications, files, websites… You name it. No more walking through a directory folder by folder or waiting for the Start menu to unfold!

To launch Launchy, you simply press Alt + Space. Then, you just type a few characters of a file name and Launchy automatically suggests the best match for it in your system. Press Enter to open it or, if the best match is not what you were looking for, scroll the drop-down menu until you find the appropriate file. Voilà. The neat thing is that whatever you pick in the menu, Launchy will remember it and it will propose it to you next time around, ahead of other matches. It’s like having a personal secretary all to yourself!

How does this relate to translation? Let me give you a few real life examples. When I want to start translating, I just call up Launchy and type “work”. Upon pressing Enter, Trados Translator’s Workbench launches. When I am doing my bookkeeping, I type “inv” and accept the proposed choice–and my Invoices folder opens like magic. If I need to look up a word, all I have to do is type “wordr” in Launchy and it will launch my default browser and load the Wordreference website.

Launchy indexes the directories you specify, so you can limit the number of irrelevant results. In other words, results will come only from the directories you told Launchy to keep an eye on. You can also use plugins for trickier functions. For example, you can search Google, Wikipedia and Amazon directly through Launchy. You can also use it as a calculator.

Launchy makes life simple and productive. I would have been happy to pay for it, but it is free! The author, Josh Karlin, welcomes donations, though.

For more information on Launchy, to download it and to browse plugins, visit www.launchy.net.

Since I have been using Launchy, I haven’t touched the Start menu. I haven’t used Windows Explorer either. They have become utterly useless. Oh, and there are no icons on my desktop–just a neat wallpaper. This is the single best weapon in my translator software arsenal.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Notes:bat:

'take notes on the run and send them to evernote
@echo off
cat " " > C:\Users\Yaakov\Documents\My Dropbox\inbox\notes.txt"
edit "C:\Users\Yaakov\Documents\My Dropbox\inbox\notes.txt"
c:\Progra~1\Evernote\Evernote3\ENScript.exe createNote /n Capture /i "Notes to process" /s"C:\Users\Yaakov\Documents\My Dropbox\inbox\notes.txt"

Add this script to the runner plugin

Another customization frenzy, I felt bored.

Click the image for the Flickr version with embedded notes explaining the desktop.

I was bored with the normal Windows Vista (Yes, you probably think Vista sucks, no need to mention that in a comment), so I decided it was time to beef it up a bit. I usually don’t spend a lot of time staring at my desktop, but when I do look at it – I want to look at something nice, minimalistic, clean and informative. Since none in the programming world seems to know what design, usability and nice user-interfaces are – we, the users, are left with a pretty standarized way of having our desktops.

So then we have to create it and customize it the way we wish it was. That’s not really a bad thing though, at least they gave us the possibility, not easily done considering a lot of the dumb road blocks that Microsoft have laid out to stop people who want difference in this world. But they did give us a small possibility by at least allowing us to install third party applications and other neat things.

Another reason for doing this is me being tired of people in the desktop-threads over at 4chan who never explain the gears working behind their, sometimes beautiful, desktops. Their usual respond is “newfag” when someone politely asks about the desktop user-interface of their wet dreams, but yeah, that’s 4chan anyways, scum of the internet and all that. The other, and main reason, for creating this post is so that I remember what I did and how the heck I got my desktop to look this way – so when I sometime, in the future, start over with a fresh install can easily modify my desktop to be nice, minimal, clean, and informative once more.

My desktop, apart from what’s in there already from the Windows OS, consists of mainly two small applications with heavy modifications (design, mostly) of the standard look you’re given when you start using the application. I’m using

• Start-Killer – To remove the ugly and totally meaningless Windows button. Heck, every keyboard (more or less, ‘least the ones that are up to date) is given the super button, or the Windows-key as most people know it by. So why would I want a stupid, bloated, fat start-icon sitting there, taking up space for my task-bar? Yes, that’s right, I wouldn’t want it!
• Taskbar Shuffle – To rearrange open tasks in the taskbar, and to rearrange icons in the tray. I like to keep my desktop clean and informative, remember.
• RocketDock – I don’t like flooding my pretty wallpaper with a heap of ugly icons, I would rather have them sit nicely in a docked bar with fancy “bubble” effects when I hoover over the application I want to launch.
• Rainmeter – Because I want to have information given to me quickly, whether it’s new torrents (automatically feeded to my torrent client using RSS (I love RSS)), reading Twitter updates from a specific source, checking the clock, remembering which day it is, or easily writing down notes/to-do lists.
• Launchy – Because I dislike opening up Windows Explorer every time I want to find some folder, open up a document, or do anything else consisting of finding files or opening applications I seldom use. With Launchy I can press a key-combination, type what I want to find, and hit enter.

For RocketDock I’m using a style called Blank (standard style in the application) and a icon-set called Reflections, with some self-made icons since the icon-set didn’t have everything I am using.

For Rainmeter I’m using a customized set of widgets/desklets called Enigma, with small config-edits to make it suit my desktop, as well as for some of the widgets to work for me (like a mail notifier, RSS-feed with things I want, Twitter-updates)

For Launchy I’m using a skin called Sutra

You can find most of those skins on DeviantArt, or by simly searching on Google.

¿Alguna vez has sentido curiosidad de ver el escritorio de los demás, cómo trabajan, y que programas utilizan?

Aquí tenéis las capturas de mi equipo corriendo bajo Windows (ya que veo que es el SO que mas utilizáis), pero “customizado” para suplir las carencias en cuanto a Gadgets / Widgets, y con algunos detalles que utilizo en Ubuntu, y que ha heredado la partición de Windows.

Difícil de distinguir eh

Anatomía de mi escritorio
Los Widgets ó Gadgets son pequeñas aplicaciones que se ejecutan en segundo plano y nos permiten tener a mano información útil de manera muy rápida. En Mac OSX lo llevan usando desde hace tiempo ya que viene integrado con el sistema, sin embargo en Windows no se implemento hasta la salida de Vista.

Personalmente me parecen más útiles los gadgets de Google Desktop, que además puedes instalarlos también en Windows XP. Pulsa Shift dos veces para mostrar los gadgets, o pulsa control dos veces para abrir un buscador rápido de Google.

Seguro que no habrá pasado desapercibido el dock inferior que reemplaza la barra de tareas. Podemos añadir las aplicaciones que utilizamos con mas frecuencia, una marca nos indicara cuales se están ejecutando, y al minimizar una ventana también aparecerá aquí.

El programa que hace esta función se llama Rocket dock y cuenta con numerosos plugins y themas para personalizarlo a nuestro gusto. Desde un reloj, información del sistema, hasta botones avanzados para desconectar memoria extraíbles, o apagar el equipo. ¡Adios barra de tareas!

Si, seguro que no vuelves a utilizarla si además incluyes un lanzador de aplicaciones, archivos, y paginas Web como Launchy. Su funcionamiento es muy sencillo, pulsas ALT + barra espaciadora, y escribes el archivo, programa o pagina Web que quieres abrir. También funciona como calculadora. Puedes indexar hasta discos extraíbles. Imprescindible.

Otra aplicación interesante es Twirl, un cliente de Twitter escrito en Air, que te permite tenerla por encima de todas las ventanas con una interfaz transparente que podemos configurar.

Para terminar, una breve mención al fondo de escritorio: el zorrito de Firefox, prueba de la masificación que esta teniendo el software de código abierto. Lo usamos todos, en Mac OSX, en Linux, en Windows… Este fondo me encanta:

Animo a todos a que hagáis una captura de vuestro escritorio, con vuestros programas, y fondos de escritorio. Da igual el sistema operativo que utilicéis. Próximamente os dejare una captura, de mí también personalizado Ubuntu.

Enlaces de interes:
Google Desktop
Rocket dock
Iconfactory
Launchy
Fondo Firefox

Using launchy on my notebook is a bit of fun and efficient, hmm… why? because you can absolutely launch anything that you can possibly think of, from  application, to any documents folder, word , excel or even wordpad file or anything you have on your computer, you can also do basic mathematics from addition to multiplication, subtraction or division., or you can even launch any website that you always visited at, you can check your mail, surf  the net by just holding the ALT key and tapping the SPACE key.  then type in a few keys of the program you are searching and hit ENTER once… wallaa!  there you go… and if  the task is finish you can also make Launchy dissappear by just hitting ESCAPE or ALT+SPACE ,hmm.. its  just like having a personal assistant on your computer, makes your work much faster and less time consuming, plus it also come in different skin that you can absolutely choose of, or customized.. .whooo.. definitely awesome application…

and its a freeware.. =>

This video introduces viewers to the free application Launchy

by: piercemtr

Vc vai precisar de:

• Wallpaper Layered Desktop
• Fences organizador de ícones
• Launchy: Note

fonte: Lifehacker

[ ]’s

Launchy – Handy App. Launcher

License : Freeware
Developer : Josh Carlin (Visit Page)
Download Link : http://www.launchy.net/#download

Terlalu repot untuk membuka aplikasi melalui start menu?. Aplikasi ini bisa jadi berguna jika anda mempunyai banyak program dan file. cukup tekan tab + Spasi (space), ketik nama program dan tekan enter, Program akan dengan cepat terbuka untuk anda.

Mari mencoba ^_^
instal dan jalankan launchy
(tekan alt + tab)

Ketik nama program disitu misalnya “winamp” dan tekan enter, winamp akan segera terbuka untuk anda ^_^

Aplikasi ini bisa untuk launcher tidak hanya untuk program saja tapi juga file, anda hanya perlu sedikit mengaturnya di menu option

Klick menu option dan klick tab “catalog”, anda bisa menambahkan directory dengan cara megeklik “+” button yang di tengah dan menghapusnya dengan “-“. Misalna add saja directory “my document” setelah itu tentukan file type-nya misalnya *.mp3, *.doc atau *.* untuk semua jenis file.

Other Stuff
- Untuk web launcher cukup ketikkan alamatnya saja, misalnya www.facebook.com dan klick enter

- Anda bisa mengatur sendiri command launchy, klick options – plug ins – runner – isikan sendiri custom commands anda
- Selain itu launchy bisa untuk kalkulator loh, coba saja 666*1/3= pasti jawabanya 222^_^

- Anda bisa menambahkan skin dan plug in, bisa di download disini ^_^

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

Once Launchy has been started, it hides in the background. You bring it forward by holding the ALT key and tapping the SPACE key. You then type in a few keys of the program you are searching for and hit ENTER once it has been found. You can also make Launchy dissappear again by hitting ESCAPE or ALT+SPACE. You can customize which key combination launches Launchy.

Launchy is developed to run on XP, however you can try downloading the gdiplus.dll and unzipping it into your Launchy directory to get it to run with Win2000.

You can extend and customize Launchy with many themes and plugins developed by its thriving user community.

Here’s an update to my previous post about good utilities that are also free.  While they’re free I should really make a donation to some of these as I find them quite useful, and that would encourage development.  I mainly run WinXP so I know that what these programs support:

• fSekrit – Use this to quickly and easily encrypt text files.  If you want to save bank account information etc this is a simple and easy way to do.  Each note gets saved as its own password protected .exe, no install required and it’s portable.  Got this one from Lifehacker
• System Explorer – Better than the Windows system tool
• QuickMonth Calendar – Really useful tool that provides a pop-up calendar when you hover over the Windows timebar in the system tray.  Provides a calendar instead of the Windows option
• Xinorbis – Hard disk analyser to show you what’s taking up all the space on your hard drive, provides lots of different reports
• Pidgin – My preferred IM client, connects to a wide range of other IM systems
• Recuva – Recover deleted files
• CCleaner – System optimisation, cleaning tool for the registry and also removes cookies, histories etc
• Revo Uninstaller – Better than the Windows uninstall program
• Launchy – A quick and easy to start programs without using the mouse, all your apps are indexed and you can most things with a quick keyboard combo
• Teracopy – Much quicker than using Windows copy, once installed it takes over the copy duties

And while it’s not a tool as such I can’t forget to mention Spotify, great app for listening to music.  It gives free CD quality streaming of music you choose, with a few ads thrown in if you don’t go for the paid for versions.  I’ve had no issue finding the music I want and the ads are not that annoying.  Can’t wait to see what they’ve planned for the future…

Programa: Launchy

Se você, como eu, tem uma imensa quantidade de aplicativos instalados em seu computador, deve ser perder em meio a tantos atalhos, assim como eu, e deve achar um saco procurar o menu Iniciar para rodar os programas. Até os atalhos da área de trabalho tornam-se difíceis de localizar depois de um certo tempo. Felizmente, encontrei um aplicativo que torna essa tarefa muito mais fácil: O Launchy.

Com o Launchy instalado, você só precisa pressionar o atalho dele, o padrão é ALT+Espaço. Então, abre-se uma pequena janela, onde você digita uma parte do título do programa, como no exemplo abaixo:

Ao digitar “Word”, ele automaticamente preenche com o primeiro atalho que contenha “Word”. E, o que é melhor, ele tem um sistema bem espertinho para pesquisar os atalhos, você pode digitar só uma pequena parte do mesmo:

Resumindo: você não precisará mais procurar por atalhos! Recomendo fortemente este programinha. Depois que você se acostuma com ele, não consegue mais ficar sem.

A Linuxok egyik kényelmes funkciója a csomagkezelő, amelyben egyetleg listából választhatjuk ki a telepítendő alkalmazásokat. Roppant mód leegyszerűsíti a telepítés menetét. Kényelmesebb még az OS X Applications mappájába történő “dobálásál” is, pedig az már tényleg az egyszerűsítés netovábbja.

Nos, Windowson is elérhető egy hasonló program, amely amellett, hogy kényelmes telepítés tesz lehetővé, ráadásul csupa ingyenes alkalmazást érünk el belőle.

Az AppSnap így Windowsos csomagkezelőnek is tekinthető. Egyetlen felületről, részletes listából, pillanatok alatt telepíthetünk, akár egyszerre több programot is. Az eltávolításuk is megoldható, ugyanígy.

Az ingyenes felhozatal olyan nevekből áll, mint az AbiWord, a FlashGet, a Free Commander, a KeePass, a DeepBurner vagy éppen a Launchy. És ez persze nem a teljes választék. Segédprogramoktól a játékokig minden van benne.

A már telepített szoftverek verziófrissítését is elvégezhetjük az AppSnapól, így még ehhez sem kell felmásznunk az internetre egy böngészővel és keresgélni.

O Launchy que ganho o premio “SourceForge community choice award, de melhor projeto” foi projetado para você esquecer o seu menu iniciar. Ele indexa seus programas e seus arquivos permitindo que você os encontre de maneira mais rápido e fácil, usando apenas o teclado.

O Launchy é um utilitário free que serve como um ótimo suporte para a produtividade durante o dia-a-dia.

Seu uso é muito simples e não requer hardware potente. Basta apertar as teclas Alt + Espaço que uma janela surge em frente a todos os programas abertos solicitando que se digite o nome do item procurado. Enquanto se digita, o programa completa a informação sugerindo o programa encontrado mais próximo ao nome digitado. Quando há mais de uma opção para o nome completo digitado, também é exibida uma lista com os possíveis itens. Esta lista também pode ser exibida a qualquer momento apertando a seta para baixo do teclado durante a digitação do nome.

Launchy

Faça o seu download agora!

Site oficial.

Ok, Not your life just your experience

I would like to dedicate this post to these cuties :

FireFox Addons: XMarks, Sxipper, ReadItLater, Ubiquity, StumbleUpon (Original Site: http://www.stumbleupon.com)

Application Launcher: Launchy

Their sites provide a way better display of their features, So I refrain myself to just making a note about each.

————————-
XMarks+Sxipper :

The first one is a Bookmarks+Password synchronizer and later is a password manager. Their combination keeps all my account and other details secure and synchronized across various PCs, and platforms^#1.

I came across both these while searching for a way to keep my Firefox bookmarks and passwords synchronized between my Ubuntu and Windows, and remain addicted still.

Sxipper is not just-another-password-manager. Two things I like about this one:

(1) It displays remembered passwords as overlays and does not fill-in automatically. Multiple logons for the same site is possible and the list is dynamic based on the number of successful logons for each account.

(2) While registering for new account, the form gets populated with my details (with a click ofcourse!) and the password field is filled with a random password and my work gets reduced to just remembering that I registered in that site

While all this happens locally, XMarks keeps them in-sync online so that things like #1 seamless.

(1) XMarks marks changes dynamically as they happen and keeps them synchronized.

(2) The password are maintained online with an extra level of encryption(atleast thats what they claim) with a seperate PIN (for passwords alone).

I didnt get to use the SiteInfo and Recommendations feature of XMarks effectively, yet.

A special note to those who care about privacy, You can set Firefox’s Master Password to prevent Sxipper filling in passwords unless provided with the Master password.

——————
ReadItLater: It does what it claims to do – For links that you want to note for a single read later.

Again, The items it store are “Unsorted Bookmarks” which gets managed by XMarks

———————
StumbleUpon: When you are not up to something, this one gets you to some interesting sites

http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/01/9351/

http://www.etni.org.il/farside/inbeginning.htm

Forgot to bookmark few others I saw

These I would like to personally recommend to my fat, lazy, proud friends :

——————————-

Ubiquity (please try) : A bold step towards context-sensitive web.

Invoke Ubiquity with the shortcut key of your choice and talk to it. It will do whatever it can within its installed commands.

Eg:

1. Select any portion of text in a webpage, invoke Ubiquity and type in “mail to xx@xx.com” (while you are signed in to G!Mail) and a new mail will be composed with the selected text quoted along with the site.

2. Select any text and type in highlight to highlight it. Followed by a “save” to save.

3. “imdb filmname” gets to the film’s page in imdb.org, “wiki topic”

4. “define” for meanings, “calculate” for builtin calculator.

5. Many more Please see : Getting Started

————–
Launchy: Both for Windows and Linux

Thats how you do things, in the browser. For those who like to play with a multitude of applications, Launchy is here.

Press Ctrl + Enter to bring up launchy and type in the program name to launch. Plugins add extra functionality and this is another must try.

These are my selections If you have any other cool ones, do comment upon.

*Sorry for improper images. My OS is currently bare

I have found the “Whereever Change Directory“(WCD) tool very useful on the command line. Its a directory changing tool that changes to the directory without requiring to type the whole path. Porting it to Launchy as a plugin would be a great utility.
The windows version of the WCD tool uses a batch file to perform the directory change operations. A batch file by the name wcdgo.bat it created at a location indicated by the wcd.bat file. To use it with Launchy, we would need to append a “start .” statement to the file. Here is the modified version called wcdLaunchy.bat, forked from wcd.bat. This is the file that has to be fed into the Runner plugin with an appropriate keyword in Launchy.

Here is how the batch file looks like.

I found a great list of “6 Free Tools that every Windows Programmer should Install” via a contact of mine on Twitter, which made me want to create my own list, similar to the tools listed in the link above, with a few additions and changes:

1. Firebug

   If you have Firefox, but you haven’t tried this yet, install it now. You’ll thank me later. Firebug is currently my most essential tool (besides Visual Studio, of course) to web development since it effortlessly debugs JavaScript and shows you the ins and outs of the DOM on any page you’re inspecting. Firebug is available as an extension for Firefox, or as a bookmarklet for any other browser.

   It’s also worth noting that Safari and Chrome (well, anything rendered with Webkit, it seems) have an excellent set of development tools built-in that are very similar to the functionality of Firebug in Firefox, and even IE8 is catching up to the game with its Developer Tools window/pane.

2. Unlocker

   I agree with Ian, this program is excellent. Gives you some useful information for a change (and something you can do with it) when you get the message “Cannot delete <X>: It is being used by another person or program.”

3. TortoiseSVN

   If you’ve been using Subversion for source control, I’m sure you’ve heard of this client. If not, get it immediately. It rocks, and integrates exceptionally well with Windows Explorer. (Not to mention Visual Studio, via AnkhSVN or VisualSVN)

4. IETester

   Since Internet Explorer is the scourge of the Interwebs that will never go away, it helps to be able to test your site in multiple versions of IE, and since only one version can be installed at a time (and since IE8 Compatibility Mode doesn’t really help at all), IETester is a good solution that lets you test IE5.5, IE6, IE7, and IE8 rendering engines in the same tabbed browser. Very cool.

5. VMWare Player

   …But, as my coworker mentioned, Internet Explorer is pretty invasive and modifies more on your system than just the rendering DLLs, so it’s a good idea to keep a spare VM running each flavor of IE as well. VMWare Player is the free version of VMWare Workstation, which will run pre-existing virtual machines, but can’t create new ones. Since that functionality is missing from VMWare Player, you can use this site to create your own virtual machines from scratch: EasyVMX! Virtual Machine Creator.

6. .NET Reflector

   RedGate’s description says it best:
   “.NET Reflector enables you to easily view, navigate, and search through, the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies, even if you don’t have the code for them. With it, you can decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic, and IL.”
   

7. Sysinternals Suite (includes Process Explorer)

   Ian Hickman’s post (6 Free Tools that every Windows Programmer should Install) suggests Process Explorer alone, which is a superior Task Manager replacement, but I’ll extend it to suggest the whole Sysinternals Suite, since it comes with so many other great utilities and includes Process Explorer along with them. One of my favorite tools besides PE is AutoRuns, which is a msconfig.exe replacement that offers a much better look at your startup apps and services.

8. WinMerge
   

   TortoiseSVN comes with its own diff tool, but I tend to end up using WinMerge instead because it does a great job with comparing local files or differing versions of a file in source control, and integrates seamlessly with TortoiseSVN.

9. Launchy
   

   I’m definitely a keyboard junkie, so anything I can do to keep my hands on the keyboard is a plus. Launchy is by far my favorite application launcher for that reason. All I have to do is hit Alt+Space (you can reassign the hotkey if you like), and it brings up a prompt that allows me to launch anything on my Start Menu, and do a number of other tasks as well (launch websites, perform quick calculations, etc.). Definitely saves me a ton of time.
   

10. Charles / Fiddler

    Of the two apps listed above, I prefer Charles, which is a paid application, but I’ve listed Fiddler as a free alternative. Both apps are proxies that log traffic between your system and the server you’re debugging (even localhost) and both provide valuable debugging information that is particularly helpful when trying to debug web services. From the Charles website:
    “Charles is an HTTP proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy that enables a developer to view all of the HTTP traffic between their machine and the Internet. This includes requests, responses and the HTTP headers (which contain the cookies and caching information).”
    

11. EmEditor / Notepad++ / Notepad2

    All three of the apps listed above are excellent full-featured text editors, but I prefer the feature set of EmEditor, which is a paid application. The killer feature that EmEditor provides which I haven’t yet found in either of the other editors is the Find *and Replace* in files. Notepad++ has a Find in Files option, but I haven’t found a Replace in Files function without opening up every single document and performing a replace in all open documents (info on that approach here: How To “Find And Replace” Words In Multiple Files).

    Notepad2 doesn’t offer the same tabbed document interface that both EmEditor and Notepad++ offer, but it is an incredibly lightweight, and more importantly, self-contained executable that’s a perfect drop-in replacement for Windows Notepad (info on how to do this here: Replace Notepad with Notepad2).

    Any of these apps offer syntax highlighting and are a great alternative to firing up Visual Studio when you need to make a quick edit (or on one of the *many* occasions when Visual Studio slows waaaaay down or locks up your system).

Honorable mention: PhraseExpress
This program rocks. I’ve only started using it recently, and not nearly to its fullest potential, but the clipboard manager functionality alone is worth the download:

Also, I neglected to mention AutoHotkey since I haven’t used it as much as I probably could, but I can say that I’ve had a lot of luck with the AutoHotkey script iTunesAnywhere, which helps since I don’t have a keyboard with multimedia keys and for whatever godforsaken reason, iTunes *still* doesn’t natively support global hotkeys like Winamp does. (I’d switch back to Winamp, but I drank the Apple kool-aid and picked up an iPhone in January.)

Lets take the following problem: you have limited time in your day. It’s a really big problem is it not? So the question on everyone’s mind, how do you get more time!?

Well we can not travel back in time and we are already trying not to waste time (“I” am not included in the “we” aparently, but no matter) so that leaves one solution left: speed!

Lets work out what can get us that little bit of extra speed. We’ll consider the following defined “facts” (references) from our daily life:

Time

The source of all our woes.

Objective

Something we need to accomplish.

Action

Something we do to accomplish the objective.

$variable

For the many other things.

Formula

We need to beat the math!

Time = (Objective[Action])($planning.time + min($completion.time) * $knowledge / $wisdom + $errors * $stupidity) * Objective::Length + Objective::idleTime

Well opss, we kinda have a problem here. First of all your not going to get any smarter any time soon (yes really!), so not much we can do to effect knowledge. For what’s worth, you might end up losing far more then you stand to gain by trying to — with out purpose — expand it like a rubber band through reading words in books, the internet, or whatever your choise of letters-with-spaces format is.

Beating your objective count is posible (get yourself a team!) but beyond the scope I’ve set for this blob of text.

Ok, that leaves the time we waste on planning, the cheats we apply to help ourselvs — call this “wisdom” — and last not least the time we sit idly wondering what we need to do, should be doing or browsing the net and playing minesweaper. If your wondering about stupidity, don’t worry that’s just 1/wisdom (yea some people have it close to infinity but its ok as long as errors are 0). Lets hack time!

Planning

You may be surprised to know that the large portion of the time you waste with planning is not actually related to the hard decitions (hard: “I do not want to think about it.”) but determining what you should be planning next, when to stop planning and so on. Lets take that out of the way:

• Do not plan, prototype!

  Much more productive and effective, no amount of planning is going to make gold into sewer mud.

• Lucky 7 rules

  Less is more. Plan seven items then work on that, then plan another seven tasks for your current one and so on. What, why not plan everything? Can you think of everything at once? the answer is No! Planning is good to get things done, if your just planning and not working on it, planning becomes pointless. So why 7, well it actually does not matter as long as you have a number in mind; you can’t get everything in one go and trying too hard is both counter productive and error prone. It does not need to be seven, you can try binary and see how that works for you (I often think plans in binary this-that way).

• Use applicable logic and order.

  A good idea is to avoid randomness or uniqueness when you make your plans; it makes them hard if not imposible to apply even if they are smart. Take a website, do not design on some obscure file structure on your server which you imagined think rather of the link structure in your site.

• Copy and plan on the fly.

  To get good results look at how other people have done it. Emulate them, learn from their mistakes, adopt good conventions (more on this later). If you can’t find anyone to learn from, no problem, first start writing if it becomes obvious you got it wrong redo. The idea is: learn from your mistakes; its faster! Go figure… we actually learn more from our mistakes then any other source (people call it experience).

Order in your system

Not necesarly referring to your filesystem of whatever operating system you are using, but for the sake of clarity let us pretend that is the subject. Makes for easy reference points and copy logic applicability.

While a relatively simple task, we unfortunetly are not so talented in naming. Naming or ordering is really the same thing. Use good names and you get order as a bonus. Try to order first and you get bad names.

So how should we go about naming?

• Do not repeat yourself.

  Name strings such as “Container”, “ContainerBottom”, “ContainerBottomForm” are not bad (initially) but eventually suffer from repetition issues, the more sub levels you have useless words you insert, first 1, next 2 next 3 etc.

• Use associative thinking.

  Lets take a unordered list, try to order it: “Profile”, “Post”, “Topic”, “Message”. I’m sure you noticed that I’ve added one extra foreign element to try to confuse you, but that proves the point: you can distinguish via their semantic order rather then some weird personal naming convention. I am not going to discurage using two words or more words in the name but do try to avoid redundant word combination such as parent–sibling pairs (eg. “NavigationPagelinks”).

• Use words not phrases.

  Why use words? they are catchy, people remember them easier then any other semantic symbol in your markup|document. If finding the right word is difficult conceive one, such as Page + Links = Pagelinks, Pagination + Options + Select = Pageselect (“options” is a redundant term; don’t be afraid to prune and minify).

• Use codephrases

  Some things are just perfectly ordered for you already, why not use them. Can you think up one? Tic tac tic tac time’s up. Well take the simple date, it’s a very simple concept understood by, well everyone that is at least partially educated; its maintained by all sorts of systems around us. Great isn’t it! Well just use it. Are you clueless as to how to order your images? you can start by placing them by year, then month etc. If the sample is too low you can order them by a combination, such as month and day (meaning a flat layout). You have geographical location, that’s usable right. How can you classify a “something”: primary, mandatory, suplimentary, ancillary, secret, secondary etc. Adjectives are nice are they not, grammer has them in there for you, use them!

• Keep it sweet and simple, stupid

  Topicbucket contains TheFlow where Posterfish roam.