4 Desktop Tools I Couldn’t Live Without

I use about 2 dozen applications on a daily basis that aid in everything from domain purchasing to web design, but these are 4 I couldn’t live without regardless of what I was doing.

TaskSwitchXP

By itself, TaskSwitchXP is a replacement for the Alt+Tab task switcher built into Windows XP (I refuse to Vista, so this one is for XP folks only). If you have a Logitech G5 /G7 – or any other mouse with programmable buttons – you can assign the thumb button to Alt+Tab and any time you press it, this task switcher will pop up, using the scroll wheel to cycle through your applications. Release the thumb button to select that app. This makes switching your applications amazingly fast. There’s an even better application called TopDesk, but I chose to give up awesomeness for speed. It’s basically Expose` for Windows.
Vista Users: You can get this effect for free

RKLauncher

Another OS X `esque app I couldn’t live without is RKLauncher. It hides the windows taskbar (optional) and gives you an application launcher that stays out of the way but gives you a much more refined way to access your applications . The real benifit to me other than it looks cool is that it gives me more screen real estate. There are other docks (ObjectDock, RocketDock) but RKLauncher is the simplest and has the fastest response when you start to get several dozen icons going. My personal favorite is ObjectDock because it has so many options and features, but it can get too slow. Again, I prefer speed over wow. My only beef with RKLauncher is that it fails to hide the windows taskbar all the time on my machine. I don’t care though because I keep my taskbar on the left side on auto-hide so I can hit the Windows key and bring up my start menu.

GreenShot

The most useful feature of GreenShot is that when you hit the PrtScn key on your keyboard it gives you cross hairs you use to outline a region of your screen you want a screenshot of. You can set it to save it to a folder somewhere or put it on your clipboard. There are other options as well as a built-in image editor as well, but I don’t use them. In this industry there’s always a need to show someone something on your screen and this little tool helps a lot. (It’s also free and open source)

Snackr

This is the newest addition to my desktop apps and I don’t know how I lived without it. Snackr is a desktop RSS Reader built with Adobe AIR. It sits on any side of any monitor (native support for multiple monitors) and scrolls through entires from your RSS feeds. You can easily hide it or let it sit on top of open windows. It’s so badass I no longer use Google Reader which until yesterday was my absolute favorite RSS Reader of all. I still add my favorite feeds to both so I can get my fix when I’m on the road. Snackr is a perfect example of Desktop 2.0 and a beacon of excellent widget design.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 3:40 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.