Law Technology

3 Launchy Tricks ? Evernote, Google Voice, RTM

By Andrew Flusche

If you want to control your computer from your keyboard, check out Launchy. It’s a free keystroke launcher. Here are three ways to supercharge Launchy.

Evernote

I use Evernote for all my note-taking needs. I constantly need to pull up a note that I’ve previously written. With Launchy and Evernote’s Windows scripting, this is now a piece of cake.

To pull up all of your notes that contain a particular string, you execute a command like this:

C:\Program Files\Evernote\Evernote3\ENscript.exe /showNotes QUERY

We can plug that into Launchy as a Runner command:

Now you can go straight to an Evernote search by typing something like this into Launchy:

en {Tab} QUERY

Fast as lightning!

Google Voice

This one’s a bit more complicated, but it’s cool. When you’re done, you’ll be able to initiate a Google Voice call by using a command like this in Launchy:

gv {Tab} 555.111.2323

That command will tell Google Voice to call your designated phone and then connect you to the phone number you entered. Ready to see how it’s done?

1. Create a Google Voice call script.

I did this in PHP. You can download this awesome class which lets you easily initiate a Google Voice call via PHP.

Put a script on your webserver that uses the Google Voice Dialer class and looks like this (replace the capitalized words with the proper values):

$gv = new GoogleVoice(USERNAME, PASSWORD);
$gv->call(YOUR-PHONE-NUMBER, $_POST['theirNumber']);

2. Now you can create a batch file on your hard drive that calls the PHP script from your web server:

@echo off
cd c:\
cmd /c curl --basic --data "theirNumber=%*" http://www.your-domain.com/your-google-voice-caller.php
Echo Exiting...

3. Prepare Launchy.

You can do this by going to the Launchy preferences, editing the “Catalog,” and adding the directory where the batch file resides. Be sure you also tell Launchy (in the Catalog tab) to look for *.bat files.

4. Call away!

Now you can call people through Google Voice with just a couple key strokes.

Remember the Milk

And to round out our trio, here’s a quick way to add tasks to RTM.

It’s actually from Lifehacker. Just download their handy script, follow the instructions, and you’ll be adding tasks in a flash!

Do you use Launchy? Any cool tips to share?

Full post as published by Legal Andrew on September 21, 2009 (boomark / email).