tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2007://1/tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56- 2007-12-03T12:00:22Z Comments for Quicksilver and ActiveWords Jack Vinson writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and more. As of December 2007 Jack will likely start writing about product management too. Movable Type 4.01 tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.42 Comment from zubari on 2005-01-20 zubari I think you've missed two important things about the way Quicksilver works.

Firstly, Quicksilver searches its catalog of names (automatically generated) based on the keys that you have entered. This means that you don't need to type the entire name of the file or application you want to access. Just the first few letters of the word are sufficient. In fact, you don't even need to do that - I could just as easily type "phot" and Quicksilver would locate "iPhoto" as the closest match, or I could type "Newf" and get "Newsfire".

Although Quicksilver does not directly index everything, it can also look inside of many things that it indexes. This means that you can access the contents of any folder straight away and, depending on the plugins installed, important data within various applications.

This leads into the second thing you've missed (probably due to lack of information). For point (2), a Quicksilver user with the iTunes plugin can access any song, artist, album or playlist within iTunes without using the mouse, browsing the finder, or activating iTunes. That is, item (2) was done completely inside the Quicksilver interface. This is all because Quicksilver's iTunes plugin gives direct access to iTunes data. This applies to many other commonly used applications that also have plugins. Much of the power of Quicksilver comes through its plugins.

These two things give Quicksilver its magic. It isn't just using keywords as shortcuts. Merlin Mann has written a number of entries on Quicksilver at 43 Folders. They are worth a look if you are interested in seeing what Quicksilver has over ActiveWords.

]]> 2005-01-20T13:48:14Z 2005-01-20T13:48:14Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.43 Comment from Jack Vinson on 2005-01-20 Jack Vinson http://jackvinson.com/ Since I don't have a Mac handy, I was going completely from conjecture. And since QuickSilver and ActiveWords are, for now, isolated from one another, this "comparison" is fair.

It sounds as if QuickSilver with plugins can be quite smart.

]]> 2005-01-20T14:47:13Z 2005-01-20T14:47:13Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.44 Comment from Peter J. Weldon on 2005-01-27 Peter J. Weldon http://www.activewords.com Hmmmm... I am not sure that we need to look at Quicksilver and ActiveWords as being competitive ideas. Rather, each feature set offer its unique set of powerful interface additions.

ActiveWords offers a direct connection between words and actions: "yahoo[trigger]" delivers www.yahoo.com.

Quicksilver offers a fast means to parse words/action relationships: "[trigger]yahoo" gives me a selection of frequently used actions related to the word "yahoo" I can select from, then press ENTER to execute.

It is probably not a matter of one approach having something "over" the other approach. More likely, the ActiveWords and Quicksilver ideas both have a home in the hearts of users, some overlapping use of each, some not.

It would be interesting to get a Macintosh implemention of ActiveWords (any takers?) and see how the ActiveWords and Quicksilver ideas might work together to provide value beyond that provided by each individually.

]]> 2005-01-27T15:47:40Z 2005-01-27T15:47:40Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.680 Comment from Shane Lindsay on 2005-03-28 Shane Lindsay There is a pc version of quicksilver - approcket
www.candylabs.com/approcket/

]]> 2005-03-28T13:20:56Z 2005-03-28T13:20:56Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.3339 Comment from Mike on 2006-03-26 Mike Approcket is a nice little program (I own it), but its not even .01% as powerful as quicksilver. approcket is rather closed off for developers to crate plugins. For the Mac the closest thing to ActieWords is Textpander.

]]> 2006-03-26T22:50:11Z 2006-03-26T22:50:11Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.5156 Comment from Jeff Foster on 2006-07-27 Jeff Foster http://the-ish.com The real beauty of quicksilver parallels what i see as (generally) the real beauty of the whole OS X platform, in that upon installation, it sort of Just Worksâ„¢
(not to sound too fanboy or anything.)

I am constantly surprised that when i want to do something, i'll just throw some keystrokes at quicksilver and 99% of the time, it seems to intuitively know what i want and give it to me. With very little setup (i needed to set up the google query) it really just learns from its seldom mistakes and always does what i hope it will. :)

that is to say: even things i've never tried before tend to just work how i hoped / imagined.

Active Words sounds nice for very very simple and repetitive tasks, but it sounds pretty underpowered when you put it next to QS. (the comparison has a hint of apples-to-artificial-apple-flavoring, in my mind.)

It would be worth your time to spend some time on QS and really gain an appreciation. 5 - 10 days of trying to use it as much as you can... and you'll be addicted. :)

]]> 2006-07-27T06:31:34Z 2006-07-27T06:31:34Z tag:blog.jackvinson.com,2005://1.56.5162 Comment from jackvinson on 2006-07-27 jackvinson http://blog.jackvinson.com Thanks, Jeff. Unfortunately, QuickSilver is out of my world, as I operate on a PC. I did just hear about a Windows app called Launchy that is said to be something quite similar to QuickSilver. From their website, I don't believe it has any plugins that make QuickSilver even more powerful.

As Pete Weldon said above, QS and AW aren't true competitors for a number of reasons.

]]> 2006-07-27T11:31:01Z 2006-07-27T11:31:01Z