I’ve stated numerous times that I really am not a huge fan of the mouse and clicking and all that jazz. Without further ado, here are my top 3 favorite “make life easier by not making me jump through hoops to do simple chores” applications.

Number 1 – Bayden’s SlickRun
http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/

This app is amazing. On my Mac I use Quicksilver, but on a PC it is hard to find an application to compete with that. I’ve tried 90% of the launchers out there, and they just aren’t what I want.

This app is exactly what I need. It hangs out in the bottom of the screen, out of the way, and when I need it I throw a hot-key out to bring it up. It uses ‘magic words’ instead of hunting for what you want. Why is this better? Because, for example, if I want firefox all I type is ‘ff’ instead of the full name – which most launchers want. Search for google images? No problem ‘gi search_term’. I was using a Yahoo! widget for this (LaunchIt) but the overhead of the Yahoo! widgets was annoying.

Adding a magic word is as simple as entering a command string, and assigning a program or URL. It also supports a ‘@MULTI@’ keyword that will preform, get this, multiple actions at once. God I love this program.

(Configuration Screenshot – click for larger image)

Number 2 – Virtual Dimension (Virtual Desktop)
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/

What’s to be said. Windows should have had virtual desktops from day 1 — OS X for that matter too, although their window management is superior to Windows. Being an on-again-off-again linux user, I’ve come to love virtual desktops. It also supports drag-and-drop of icons for switching desktops, which is awesome.

Number 3 – Taskbar Shuffle
http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm

Very simple application that allows you to drag & drop your taskbar items. Useful if you are switching between 2 programs and would like them next to eachother, or if you just like to stay organized. Not too much to say about this, it is a very simple, effective program.

Apocalypse 2.0 – the day the web broke by ZDNet’s Ryan Stewart — On February 16th, 2005, Jesse James Garrett coined the term Ajax in an article titled “Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications”. Days before that, on February 8th, the Google Blog announced something called Google Maps. Ajax was born and the web hasn’t been the same since. The combination of JavaScript, DHTML and CSS seemed to breathe a new kind of life into the web. All of a sudden you could program a series of hacks and your web page didn’t behave like a web page before. All that time you spent learning JavaScript? With Ajax, you were in demand again! People started saying things like “JavaScript Engineer” with a straight face.