Burning Star

As you can see in my blogroll, I’m a Lifehacker fanboy. And I’m also a fan of application launchers, because I think, they can increase the speed of your workflow a lot. For some time, I was using Enso. But since a post on Lifehacker, about using cURL with the famous app launcher Launchy to control webservices like Twitter, gCal and RTM, I knew this was what I looked for. This week, Lifehacker (again) hooked me on another app launcher: Executor, which I personally like more than Launchy. So why not integrate Lifehacker’s Launchy tweaks in better app launcher Executor?

Integrating Lifehacker’s tweaks in Executor

Just follow the instructions on this Lifehacker post step by step:

• Download cURL and extract it to C:\Windows.
• Download the ZIP file with the cURL batches, extract it anywhere on your computer (ignore the Launchy utilities part).
• Then go through the steps of the services you want to use (edit files, make friends on Twitter, …).
• If everything is set up, you just have to add the keywords to Executor. Right click on the tray icon of Executor and choose “Add keyword”. Now (e.g. if you want to set up Remember The Milk) enter something like “rtm” in the field “Keywords”, in “Command” you enter the path to your batch file and in “Parameters” you enter just “$P$”, which is special Executor syntax to pass the parameters to the batch file.
• When your done, let Executor show up and type “rtm”, then hit the left arrow key and enter your task using the (pretty natural) commands listed here.
• The set up of gCal and Twitter updating itself is very similar, just remind to enter “$P$” in the Parameters field.

Set up RTM in Executor

Add task to RTM via Executor

Adding more abilities to Executor

Now that you already can do this great stuff with Executor, I want to list some Keywords I use. The code represents what you have to fill in the “Command” field of your new Keyword, “Parameters” can be left blank, of course, “Keyword” can be whatever you want. All these commands are browser based, so this will open your browser resp. a new tab.

Search for Addresses or Points of Interest with Google Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=$U$

Note: This works with terms like “times square new york”, but also with “new york hot dog”

Start writing an Email in gmail, providing the subject

https://mail.google.com/mail/?fs=1&view=cm&shva=1&su=$U$

Note: I prefer passing the subject instead of the recipient, because therefore gmail offers an autocompletion feature, so this step can be taken pretty fast already. If you want to do it in another way, have a look at the G-Mailto page, where the possible gmail query variables are explained (see Gmail Field Variables). Combining this with the ability of Executor, to pass more than one parameter (see documentation: “$U1$, $U2$” resp. “$P1$, $P2$”) you theoretically could fire a keyword like this: “mail meeting chris@example.org boss@example.org” (meaning [keyword] [subject] [recipient] [cc]).

Search Flickr for Creative Common (Name Attribution) licensed Images

http://flickr.com/search/?l=commderiv&ss=1&ct=6&mt=photos&w=all&z=t&q=$U$

Search any website via Google (in this case php.net)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aphp.net+$U$

Search Leo.org (Dictionary)

http://dict.leo.org/?lp=ende&lang=en&search=$U$

Do more to increase your speed

With this tricks you can do a lot more than this. Just take a minute to think about, which actions you perform over and over again. For example, I use Executor to launch specific code documentations I need every day or I open my favorite feeds in Google Reader (keyword: lifehacker). Beside the web tricks, have a look at the good old command line functions, so you can build your own batch files e.g. to work in your filesystem. And finally (if you are into this) you can use cURL, like Livehacker did, to interact with the webservices you use. Assuming this service provides an API, but meanwhile most of them do. What about a keyword “basecamp addtask chris fix-bug123″?

I hope you enjoyed this article, if you did or if there are some questions left, just drop me a line in the comments.

UPDATE:
In case, you are an Evernote user (like me), you’re maybe also interested in a solution to access Evernote via Executor.