Over on the Office Google Mac Blog they're calling attention to simple little application from Google Mac Team member David Phillip Oster called AppMenuBoy. Basically, it will allow you to get one click access to all your applications by clicking on its Dock icon.

David designed it to function like folders on the Dock did back in the good old Tiger days, when you could simply drag your Applications folder to the Dock to get a basic launcher. Though the 10.5.2 update improved things to some degree from the original Stacks behavior in Leopard, AppMenuBoy "shows only applications, follows aliases, and if a folder contains only an application, it silently 'hoists' that application in the menu so you don't have hierarchical menus that contain only a single icon."

AppMenuBoy is a free download from Google Code.

If you're like me, when you sit down at your Mac, you end up opening a few specific apps depending on what kind of project you're working on. I am going to show you how you can group these applications into "task launchers" that will bring up a suite of programs with one click. For instance, I have a script that will open iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie called "Create Movies." When I run this script, it will open all of the applications I need to make my movie. I also have one called "Productivity" that will, when opened, launch Mail, iChat, Pages, and Yojimbo (even though some might argue with iChat's productivity value).

Want to make your own launchers? Continue reading for the instructions.

It seems like this news has been around for a while, but we'd never heard it, and it's definitely worth taking a look at. Alcor, developer of Quicksilver, the little launcher that does everything, quietly mentions on the Blacktree forums that Quicksilver will go open source and Leopard only with the next release.

What does that mean for Quicksilver's users? Probably not a lot, although with a few interested developers on board, it'll probably mean quicker updates and more responsive bugfixes. Even Alcor says in the thread that while bugfixes and updates are planned for Leopard, he has no idea when they'll actually be released, and an open source app would probably make specific fixes faster.

As for a timeline on making it open source, Alcor doesn't promise anything too exciting on that end, either. He does say that the OS version of Quicksilver will be for Leopard, so we're looking at least at October, if not later. But if Quicksilver is going open source, it likely means that one of the Mac's best applications will only get better.

[ via DJ ]

Application launchers are diversifying in big ways, and it's great to see the market expanding. After discovering LaunchBar then switching to Quicksilver, it was obvious how useful these apps are and how important it is that there be a wide variety of them. A new launcher I just found, called Trampoline, definitely adds a new flavor to the mix.

Trampoline bills itself as "the quickest route to the tools you need," and it fits the bill pretty well. Unlike other similar app launchers and file manipulators, Trampoline offers what I would call a 'circular Dock' that can be toggled via a key or tied to a mouse button. Users can add their favorite and most-used apps to this on-call Dock, and it appears underneath your mouse, wherever that may be.

As a unique alternative to other comparatively 'bloated' app launchers (though I say that with love as I cannot work without Quicksilver), Trampoline offers a simpler, more direct approach to keeping your beloved tools right at your fingertips.

A demo is available from Old Jewel Software, and a license costs $19.95.

Valet is a new kind of application launcher that brings some interesting innovations to the table. First, upon activation it offers a heads-up display containing application icons, organized into categories of your choosing. This is a rich visual departure from competition like LaunchBar and Quicksilver. Second, Valet is heavy on voice control, though you apparently still need to activate it with a hotkey.

Perhaps most interesting is Valet's ability to also open Windows applications inside of a Parallels virtual machine. That's right: you can create a category containing Windows apps like Internet Explorer, Access or even shortcuts to Control Panel items. Calling these things from Valet will start Parallels, open your virtual machine and fire up the Windows app of your choosing. Does anyone else see the line between OSes getting thinner with new apps like this?

Valet doesn't stop there though; other tricks up its sleeve include Growl support and automatic detection of new apps. If you want to see Valet in action, its developers have put together a nice demo (QuickTime link) of the voice activation and heads-up display features.

Valet is a Universal Binary. Licenses are $25, and volume licensing options are available upon request.

If you're finished with smacking your MacBook to make it do your bidding, maybe you can move on to tilting it and playing with the some mood lighting (in the Pro models) to really get things done? Lilt is a new app that harnesses the power of of Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor (found in PowerBooks, MBs and MBPs) and the ambient light sensor (PowerBooks and MBPs only) to allow you to trigger the launch of applications, files and scripts. With AppleScript support, the possibilities are of course almost limitless, but the basic examples the developer Jonathan Nathan uses include waving your hand over the ambient light sensor to change tracks in iTunes, as well as tilting the machine back to hear the time spoken to you. Naturally, Lilt includes plenty of built-in actions like locking the screen, speaking text, controlling the volume and launching apps, just to help you hit the ground running.

Until November 30th, Lilt is offered as a pre-release version, free of restrictions. After that, the price rises to a mere $5. Not bad for a whole new way to boss your notebook around, and with Lilt, the odds are far less that you might give it a black eye.

A pre-release, developer version of Quicksilver is available with a seriously revamped preference pane. Also included in this not-ready-for-prime-time release: a new Triggers system that allows for groups, a revamped plug-in pane with categories and "droplets," which you can read more on here. I'm sure there's more hidden under the hood of this release, but finals are trumping the amount of time I have to tinker with this stuff.

Since I just know some of you are going to ask, here's how to get your hands on this developer preview edition, but please do not bug us if things get wonky; it's an unstable dev edition. You have been warned: Go to the Application tab in Quicksilver's preferences and change which version it checks for updates; I believe it's actually called 'developer preview.' Then tell it to check for an update and you should be able to snag the new version. Enjoy.

[via Hawk Wings]

While there are many full-featured launchers and dock alternatives available, Overflow by Stunt Software keeps it simple. The interface features several wells, into which you can drop an application, folder, volume and so on. Simply click the Overflow icon in the dock to activate it (or better yet, let Quicksilver do the job), then click the icon representing what you're after. Simple and effective.

Overflow requires Mac OS 10.3.9 or later and costs $14.95US (or, if you're very quick, $9.95US at Maczot for the next couple of hours).

This morning Quicksilver notified me that a new version was available. Since I love living on the bleeding edge of application launching and file manipulation, I went ahead and updated. While I can hold my own fairly well with Quicksilver's unbelievably powerful features, I was still delighted to see that, upon installing the new version and restarting Quicksilver, I was greeted with an upgraded intro dialog (pictured) that better explains how Quicksilver functions. This should be good news to us Quicksilver-faithful, as it should help new and would-be users get a grasp of Quicksilver's function and power more quickly.

The new version can be grabbed either from Quicksilver's preferences - or for you curious new users - their site.