If I could give only one award to a piece of software a year (believe me, I am giving many ;-) the winner for 2006 is Windows Desktop Search by a large margin. I haven't performed any measurements, but it must have increased my productivity by at least 10%. I hardly ever use the Windows File Explorer, Outlook search or even the Start menu any more. I search through my email archive at least 10 times a day, which now happens at the blink of an eye.
Anyway, enough praise, on to my latest discovery in this fab piece of software, shortcuts. I have known for a while that it is possible to add shortcuts using the '@' command, but I never had the time to look into it. Today I did and from now on I will probably stop using my Internet Explorer Favorites as well.
- Create shortcut to my bug tracking system: @bugs,http://somehardtoremembereurl.com/bugtracking
- Create shortcut to my helpdesk system: @helpdesk,http://somehardtoremembereurl.com/helpdesk
- Create shortcut to my home dir on server: @home,\\server01\home\j.ritmeijer
- Create shortcut to important project: @GolfMate,\\server01\projects\customername\GolfMate
- Create shortcut to Photoshop: @Photo,C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Photoshop.exe
I can now invoke any of those shortcuts by just typing in the shortcut name without the '@' character and pressing enter.
Life is good......for now.
Right, before I forget, a shameless plug. I have recently got hold of a large number (and we are talking really large numbers here) of refurbished and new iPAQ 4150 devices including Bluetooth GPS modules, extended batteries, SD cards and lots of other extras. I am selling them at a huge discount of over £200. They are selling quite well, so get them while you can. For those who don't know, the 4150 model is the best iPAQ ever made.