Bill Gates used to have a corporate vision: "information at your fingertips". With LaunchBar that future is here. This is far and away my A-number-1 mac productivity tip and I've passed it along to the many PC migrants who have asked me for Mac advice.
With LaunchBar, here is what I can do from anywhere, at any time:
You can directly access the Mac Address Book and Mail:
Recently, in The Mother of All Search Functions David Pogue wrote about how you can use Google's I'm Feeling Lucky to find things so much quicker. That is great, except you have to find your way to the Google home page, which can take a few steps. With LaunchBar you can kick it up a notch and find things through I Feel Lucky anywhere, anytime. To use Pogue's examples:
There are other solutions that do bits and pieces of what LaunchBar does.
FireFox 3 has its awesome bar, which lets you do some of LaunchBar's tricks within the URL line. It's a big step forward, but still not in the same league as LaunchBar. But it's not smart about the abbreviations, and you must first be in Firefox, in the address bar. Having LaunchBar globally accessible saves you these little steps a hundred times a day.
MacOS has Spotlight to launch docs, which was apparently inspired in part by LaunchBar. But it doesn't learn your shortcuts and it's only for finding stuff on your hard drive.
There are other tools on the Mac, some free (Butler and Quicksilver). I have tried them extensively, and they are not bad. But when you are shooting for maximum productivity, I have found that it's not worth scrimping. LaunchBar is the professional's tool.
A key feature that distinguishes LaunchBar from the competition is that you don't have to explicitly pre-program the shortcuts. Just use what feels natural and automatic. To get to nytimes.com, just type any reasonable subset from the string... nyt, ny, times, pick the correct match from the disambiguation menu. It'll quickly learn to associate the destination with the shortcuts you typically use. You train it just by using it, not by going into a configuration UI.
And you don't have to be consistent. Use "nyti" one day and "ny" the next. It'll learn your habits after a couple of tries. This means you don't have to memorize shortcuts you haven't used in a while.
If you use a Mac as your main productivity computer, you really owe it to yourself to get a hold of LaunchBar. Opening and finding things does not get much faster. It's Information at your fingertips.
(*Caveat: Firefox 3's new bookmarking system is not yet supported in LaunchBar, but will be in an upcoming version. In the meantime there is a good workaround.)
With LaunchBar, here is what I can do from anywhere, at any time:
- Open an app, document or a project folder: cmd-space, then type a few of letters of the item to open, then press return
- You can navigate up and down the folder hierarchy. For example: type in an abbreviation to get to a project folder, then use the arrow keys to get to a particular document within the folder.
- Open a recently used app: "cmd-space ps space" reveals, for example, a list of recently opened Photoshop files. Arrow down and pick one to open it.
You can directly access the Mac Address Book and Mail:
- Look up David Cortright in the address book: "cmd-space cortr return"
- Start a new email to David Creemer: "cmd-space creem shift-return"
- Get to any browser bookmark*: "cmd-space nyt" to get to nytimes.com.
- Open a URL : "cmd-space cmd-l productvision.org" There is no need to have a browser open or frontmost.
- Look up something in Google: "cmd-space g product vision"
- Look up something in Wikipedia: "cmd-space w bill maher"
- Look up an address in Google Maps: "cmd-space gm 123 Sesame 32177"
- Look up a store in Google Maps: "cmd-space gm pizza 94114"
- Search for a product in Amazon: "cmd-space am nikon d90"
- Look up a movie in Rotten Tomatoes: "cmd-space rt religulous"
- Look up a movie in Netflix: "cmd-space nfs the closer"
- Look up something in Yahoo Answers: "cmd-space ya remove bubble gum"
Recently, in The Mother of All Search Functions David Pogue wrote about how you can use Google's I'm Feeling Lucky to find things so much quicker. That is great, except you have to find your way to the Google home page, which can take a few steps. With LaunchBar you can kick it up a notch and find things through I Feel Lucky anywhere, anytime. To use Pogue's examples:
- Get straight to a product page in Amazon: "cmd-space gl amazon freakonomics"
- Find something on ebay: "cmd-space gl ebay delft figurine"
- Look up a word in the dictionary Define.com: "cmd-space gl define ersatz"
- Look up someone in Facebook: "cmd-space gl facebook amy pomeroy"
There are other solutions that do bits and pieces of what LaunchBar does.
FireFox 3 has its awesome bar, which lets you do some of LaunchBar's tricks within the URL line. It's a big step forward, but still not in the same league as LaunchBar. But it's not smart about the abbreviations, and you must first be in Firefox, in the address bar. Having LaunchBar globally accessible saves you these little steps a hundred times a day.
MacOS has Spotlight to launch docs, which was apparently inspired in part by LaunchBar. But it doesn't learn your shortcuts and it's only for finding stuff on your hard drive.
There are other tools on the Mac, some free (Butler and Quicksilver). I have tried them extensively, and they are not bad. But when you are shooting for maximum productivity, I have found that it's not worth scrimping. LaunchBar is the professional's tool.
A key feature that distinguishes LaunchBar from the competition is that you don't have to explicitly pre-program the shortcuts. Just use what feels natural and automatic. To get to nytimes.com, just type any reasonable subset from the string... nyt, ny, times, pick the correct match from the disambiguation menu. It'll quickly learn to associate the destination with the shortcuts you typically use. You train it just by using it, not by going into a configuration UI.
And you don't have to be consistent. Use "nyti" one day and "ny" the next. It'll learn your habits after a couple of tries. This means you don't have to memorize shortcuts you haven't used in a while.
If you use a Mac as your main productivity computer, you really owe it to yourself to get a hold of LaunchBar. Opening and finding things does not get much faster. It's Information at your fingertips.
(*Caveat: Firefox 3's new bookmarking system is not yet supported in LaunchBar, but will be in an upcoming version. In the meantime there is a good workaround.)
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