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sapiens posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Odds and ends

Trampoline updates to 2.3.2

We reported on Trampoline a while back-- it's a radial application launcher that bills itself as a way to give you quick access to your "core set" of tools. A few people have marked it as very similar to Sapiens, and that's true-- both are circular launchers that allow you to fire off applications quickly when you need them. Sapiens is a great application, but it seems to have a little more under the hood in terms of learning your apps and where to place them, whereas Trampoline seems to be more interested in just providing quick access, not mapping your apps out for you. The other main difference in usage seems to be that Sapiens can be activated with a circular mouse movement (sometimes a bonus, sometimes an annoyance, if you didn't mean to activate it), while Trampoline is activated with a mappable hotkey. It's up to you whether one is more or less efficient than the other.

At any rate, this is your Mac we're talking about, so you can use either or both or none. Trampoline's Joseph Wardell let us know that his application has just been updated to 2.3.2, which brings better compatibility with Leopard applications (including Time Machine), and some speed updates and improvements. Trampoline remains shareware (just like Sapiens, incidentally)-- use a trial for as long as you want, or support the application with a purchase for $19.95.

Filed under: Software, Productivity

Sapiens: mouse-centric application launcher

We've mentioned Donelleschi software before in connection with Sticky Windows, which allows you to shrink windows to a tab on the side of your desktop. Now they're back with a new mouse-centric launcher application called Sapiens. In contrast to keyboard launchers like LaunchBar, Sapiens is supposed to allow you to launch applications with just your mouse. Basically, you activate Sapiens by moving your mouse in a circle, and up pops a radial dial menu with various applications on it.

According to the developer Sapiens "can accurately learn and understand the applications you use and is therefore able to make reliable predictions about the set of applications you are most likely to launch." So you actually have to train it for a couple of days so that it can learn what applications you use. If the application you want does not appear initially when you invoke Sapiens, you can use the keyboard to search for it. Sapiens also interacts with drag and drop so that you can select and drag a file, invoke Sapiens with the circular mouse gesture, and then drop the file on your desired application.

I've only been playing with Sapiens for a few minutes so I can't yet measure the developer's claims about its capacity to learn my habits. I should also point out that TUAW favorite Quicksilver has some mouse-centric plugins that will allow it to do some of the things Sapiens does, via mouse gestures and the Constellation menu.

Sapiens is now $19.95 (introductory price, to go up to $25.95 at some point) and a demo is available. I also recommend checking out the slick introductory movie on the main Sapiens page for a visual demonstration of what it can do.

[via MacMinute]

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