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When it comes to computer software, I have a default bias towards tiny little applications that are built to do one thing and to do it extremely well. I abhor bulky, bloated, and expensive applications that try to do everything under the sun (and end up doing nothing well anyway).

But the downside is that, with so many applications installed on my computer, it was taking me about 30 seconds or more of my life just to locate any application I wanted to launch via the old and rusty Windows Start menu.

There had to be a better way to launch applications in Windows! So I started the hunt … and discovered a great little app, aptly named Launchy.

Launchy is a free and open source windows utility written by Josh Karlin and designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, the so-called quick launch toolbar, and even your file manager!

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and any directory you throw at it, and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

This can save you a ton of time, if you find yourself switching between several applications like I do.

Getting Launchy to Launch Your Applications

For you geeks out there, simply head over to the Launchy homepage and grab the application from SourceForge. Nothing special to worry about.

But for the rest of us …

For the rest of us who need a step-by-actionable-step guide to get things done, here’s how to get Launchy running on your Windows computer and forget about your Start menu for good.

We have to do three things: download the application, install it, and finally learn a few basic stuff to get us started with this super time saver.

Downloading Launchy: First head over to the Launchy homepage, take a peek around, and hit the download link. If you’re super busy, go straight to the download page hosted at SourceForge. The entire application is just about 800k … and should download in no time at all.

Installing Launchy: Installing Lunchy couldn’t be easier. Simply double-click on the downloaded file and the installation wizard pops up. Follow the on-screen instructions, and you’ll be just fine.

Running Applications with Launchy: Now that we have our helper installed, it’s about time we asked it to launch some applications for us. After installation, Launchy registers itself to automatically start whenever you startup your computer. But once started, it hides in the background.

To bring it forward … hold the alt key and tap the space key (i.e. ALT + Space). This is how the default skin looks like:

Now, type in a few keys of the program you want to run and hit enter once it has been found. Let’s say I wanted to start Firefox:

If you type a few keys and don’t get the program you’d like to run, simply wait for about 20 seconds. Launchy then displays a drop-down menu of the list of programs it finds matching the keys you have typed:

After launching your application, you can make Launchy disappear again by simply hitting Escape or Alt + Space.

Customize Launchy to your Heart’s Desire

Yeah, that’s right. You can customize Launchy to your heart’s desire. See the readme.pdf file that comes with the application for details. Here are a few suggestions for you (I won’t go into the details):

• Change your skin, so Launchy looks the way you want it to look
• Add additional folders and applications that you’d like Launchy to index and launch
• Change the hot key from the default Alt + Space to whatever you desire
• Change the number of suggestions from the default 10, or disable it all together
• Make Launchy stick permanently on your desktop, instead of hiding itself.

Yup, that’s pretty it. Needless to say Launchy has really been a time saver for me, and I really love it. Give it a try and share your thoughts.

As someone looking to strike my niche in technology and eventually becoming a venture capitalist, DEMO is one event I never ‘miss.’ Yeah, I’ve never been physically at the event before, but I hope to — someday — either to present my startup, or to look for cool startups to invest in.

DEMO is organized twice a year, and each event showcases over 60 of the hottest startups with the most outstanding technology. The first of this year’s DEMO has already come and gone … and one startup that really caught my attention was Zink, a company that promises to make your life easier by eliminating ink from your printing jobs.

Yes, that’s right … print, but without ink — no cartridges, ribbons or toners!

The company’s name, ZINK, stands for “Zero Ink” and the key to ZINK’s zero-ink printing process is a special “ZINK paper” … a composite material with dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside.

Before printing, the embedded dye crystals are colorless, so ZINK paper looks like regular white photo paper. During printing, the ZINK printer uses heat to activate and colorize these dye crystals to create the image.

But ZINK is doing something more interesting, besides the promise of zero-ink printing. Current printers are bulky mainly due to the delicate housing for the cartridges, ribbons or toners, and the mechanical components needed to move them to and fro to inject ink onto the paper. But with the ink out of the way, all these components are not needed anymore, and interesting things can begin to happen.

And ZINK is taking full advantage of this. A mobile printer that will connect wirelessly or via USB cable to any camera phone or digital camera is on it’s way to the market later this year. But why end there? ZINK is also coming up with an integrated digital camera/printer — a full featured digital camera with a built-in full color printer!

Both devices will support full-color 2″ x 3″ digital photos, the size of regular business cards. Currently, a 2-by-3-inch picture comes out dry in 30 seconds, a just little slower than the ink jet printer.

So yeah, no ink, toner or ribbon to print. But, so far, the Zink printer can’t print on regular paper. And this special Zink paper doesn’t come cheap. According to Mercury News (free subscription may be required), at the moment, a 4-by-6-inch print costs Zink about 80 cents to print, roughly three to 10 times as expensive as inkjet prints.

So the question on my mind now is if and when ZINK can bring down the cost of their ZINK Paper so that we’re not simply transferring the cost of ink to paper.

ZINK is not really your typical two-friends-in-a-garage style startup. The company was formed in October 2005 as a spin-off from Polaroid, company that is no stranger in the image processing industry. The company already has 65 employees, and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

This is one product I’m keenly waiting to buy. What about you?

Did you use to “read the Graphic” as you were sitting on the old John? Do you still do it? I do. I started this habit way back then … when I was learning the skill of multi-tasking. And habits, they say die hard.

But now Roto Rooter, a plumbing services company based in the United States is making it easier than ever to get onto the multi-tasking wagon. They’re giving away a toilet unlike any you’ve seen or probably dreamt of before: fully fitted with a Microsoft Xbox 360 core system, a 30GB Apple iPod, a Phillips 20″ LCD Flat-Panel TV, an Avanti Compact Refrigerator … the list goes on and on.

And my favorite fitting?

The Megaphone: Need more toilet paper? Just excited you’re in the John? Make yourself heard up to 300 feet away with this megaphone. You’ll want to shout about this John.

Hey … this sweepstakes is only open to US residents … but it’ll sure spark up your creative genes. So take a look at it all the same. Be sure to hover your mouse over each of the fittings to see a description and suggested usage . Check it out now

I’m not a programmer. Far from it. But I hang around with so many programmer friends (mostly online) that sometimes people (including myself) mistake me for one.

And I’m often amazed when I hear folks talk about the amount code out there already in the open source community for practically any project one can think of. But the problem, they’d usually add, is finding what’s already out there for your specific project.

That’s where code search engines come in. These are a new generation of search engines that allow you to search for source code from various projects and in various programming languages. Here’s a short overview of 4 of the more popular ones.

Google Code Search: As can be seen from the logo, this is still a Google Labs project, not quite ready for prime time. Google extends it’s simple and intuitive search interface to Code Search as well. On the “Advanced Code Search” page, you can opt to limit search results to a particular programming language or a particular license.

Google aside, there are a few startups who are also working to make code readily avaible to programmers. One of such startups is Krugle, which is built on Lucene, the open source search software. Krugle provides both code and project search, as well as links to related technical papers.

Koders is another startup in the code search arena. Koders has a simple search interface not too different from Google. They also have a nifty Firefox search plugin for all supported languages and for individual languages.

All The Code is another code search engine that was launched recently. Presently, All The Code only returns results for the Java language, so unless you’re a java juggernaut, this one will not be useful to you. Expect more languages to be added soon!

NO matter what search engine you use, I think an important issue you should not overlook is the type of license under which the code is released, if you’re going to re-use specific code in your projects (why re-invent the wheel?). While, I believe, all code returned in query results are free to use, some of the licenses might require that you also give away or make open whatever you do with that piece of code.

Sure, copyright laws are dead in Ghana … but you never know when someone will knock at your door to buy or invest in your project, product, or company (that’s what I’m here for ). If this were to happen, whether or not you have absolute right to the code behind your software will surely play a role in the valuation.

Have you used any of these code search engines before? Do you know of any other? Please share in the comments below.

Gizmo Call is a new web-based telephony service from the team behind the Gizmo Project voice and IM software, as well as the SIPphone VoIP platform.

The new service offers up to 10 minutes of free worldwide calls to registered users daily. Unregistered users get half of this, while users with Gizmo Call Out accounts get more.

Users can also put a “Call Me” button or link on their web pages or e-mail signature file for others to call them for free.

To make a call, you visit http://www.gizmocall.com and type in the telephone number you want to call. Currently you can call mobile phones, landlines, Jabber/Gmail users, and Gizmo Project users. If you’re a first time user, you’ll need to install the Gizmo Call flash plugin before you can use the service.

Installing the plugin is a breeze: simply download it (about 1MB in size) and run the executable file. A pop-up appears a few seconds later to confirm installation is complete. After installation, simply reload the Gizmo Call page and make your call. But this is where the fun ended for me.

For some reason, the application worked only once for me, and won’t work again. The flash plugin won’t initialize. I re-installed the plugin several times, but no luck. Heck, I even switched to o’l Internet Explorer just to see if it’s a browser issue … but no luck either.

If this works out, that’ll be the closest I’ve ever come to making free calls to standard telephones (mobiles and landlines) in Ghana. Sure 10 minutes a day is not that much … but hey … it’s free. So give it a try, and let’s see if it works for you.

Over the last weekend, I was given a task to go through a ‘pile’ (actually e-mails) of job applications to make a shortlist of candidates to be interviewed.

As the role to be filled involves tremendous amount of initiative (and the fact that the number of applications were really overwhelming), we decided to place some emphasis on how much attention the applicants paid to the advertisement, including the procedure for submitting their applications.

I grabbed my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and started my way through the applications. This is so easy, I thought, as I went to the third application. All I had to do was to hit “delete.” But no, wait a minute. Before I realized what was happening, I had thrashed ALL the applications! Goodness me! So I had to go into the trash to dig out a few boarder-line applications.

Now I don’t have much any experience in offline recruiting (I wasn’t born then ), but my little experience with online recruiting tells me that besides the employer name, job title, and required degree, most people pay very little attention to anything else.

And folks are too deeply stuck in the offline mentality, and do not give the least thought to taking advantage of new electronic tools to make their application stand out.

The end result is that online recruiters get inundated with increasing numbers of unqualified job applications. No wonder mini (topical) job boards are thriving.

So here are my 8 common sense tips for online job applicants. These are all plain common sense - no “top secrete tips” or “guru tips.” But, as I’ve come to appreciate now, common sense is not common practice. Let’s go now:

1. Pay attention to the job’s requirements. Don’t take employers for fools, and don’t waste your time and that of others. If the ad specifies a location for the job, and you cannot re-locate or commute, let it pass. If you feel you can fill the role working from somewhere else, explain this in your application for your prospective employers to know that you understand their position, but you have an alternative arrangement. Merely saying I want to work from X (instead of Y) ill not cut it.
2. Write to communicate, not to impress. You did enough of the latter back at school. Now you’re in the real world, talking to real human beings, for a real cause. No recruiter is going to call you and ask you to explain a line or paragraph you wrote, like your school teacher used to do. Use simple language, and just enough of it to say what needs be said.
3. For God’s own sake, don’t paste your CV into the mailbox. Yeah, everything might look OK for you in your mail reader after pasting your CV. But you know what? Not everyone uses the same e-mail client as you, and many people switch off rich text formatting entirely. SO your gloriously formatted CV will only appear as a junk pile of text that simply not be read, if you simply copy and paste it.
4. Proofread. Yeah, really do. Most Word Processors have basic proof-reading tools built in them. Use them, but with care: computers cannot think, yet.
5. “Here is my application” or worse … blank mails, no subject, only attachment. See, folks are busy. At the very least, put the title of the position you’re applying for in the subject line, and please write something. Not just “find application attached”. In fact, I personally prefer to read the cover letter in the mailbox, and only download the resume if the cover letter strikes a chord.
6. Ask a trusted friend to go through your application: It’s so easy to NOT see what others see, especially, in our own works. And if you’re asking someone to go through your application, better make it clear what you want the person to look for, else the only feedback you’re likely to get is corrections for spelling mistakes — something, IMO, you don’t need a human being to do for you.
7. Submit your application only in the requested file formats. This one is a deal breaker for me. I don’t know which one drives me crazy the most: the stuff pasted in the mailbox that I cannot make any sense of, or the MS Word attachments that I dare not open to make any sense of. Here’s another sure way to yell at your prospective employer …”hey dude, to hell with all those details.” If you’re asked to submit your application as a PDF attachment, just do that. RTF attachment? Just do that. And if you don’t know how, just ask for help. Period.
8. If you’re going to cite a prior project, better make sure it’s one that rocks. A busybody wanted to impress us by citing a “fully functioned website” (his words) he’d designed, even though we never asked for this, and the position had nothing to do with web design. And his “star” creation? You decide: www.deluxe-ict.com

Bonus Point: Now this is where I’m going to lose most readers. But for the really serious folks, my suggestion is to open a ‘fresh page’ for every new job application. Yeah, that’s right. Sure, you can go to your previous applications and copy blocks of text, but don’t start with an old application and edit it.

This way, you’ll avoid most of the obvious boo-boos … like addressing your application to the wrong organisation, or stating the wrong job title … all from your previous applications that you simply edited (both of which I saw while going through these applications).

But more importantly, this will force you to give more thoughts to the position and the employer you’re courting, and trust me, this thinking and planning will save you lots of time when you’re called for an interview.

Yeah, I know this list will look like a guerrilla warfare for most folks, and many will, in fact, just ignore it. But I think if a job is worth applying, you’d better give your best shot at it.

(After all the hard work, one — yeah, only one — lady was shortlisted for an interview, via IM. The last time I tried this, it was a terrible mess: the candidate simply couldn’t bring himself to the reality that he was being interviewed for a job, and not chatting with his buddies online. I’ll surely write about how this one goes.)

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