I'm In Love With Alfred

I finally come out of the closet: I love Alfred !!!

If there is one thing that has affected the way I use my computer even more than the release of OS X Lion, it is Alfred. How to best define this little app ? To call it simply a launcher would be an understatement. For those of you who are familiar with Quicksilver or Launchbar, you know what type of tool I am referring to. Without lifting your hands from your keyboard and simply by typing a shortcut you suddenly have access to pretty much anything on your computer or the web. It is a productivity app that lets you search  the web, browse or play music from your iTunes library, perform actions like copying or moving files, foders and email...you name it. Last night version 1.0 was finally released and it has a lot of new features like Global Hotkeys, TextExpander style Snippets and other shortcuts. A typical and simple example of the way I have used Alfred till now: instead of opening my browser, going to amazon.com and typing "Neal Stephenson" in the search box, I hit the hotkey for Alfred and I type "amazon neal stephenson". The result is immediate. Or if I need to access the subfolder called "Scrap" nested deep inside DropBox I just hit the Alfred hotkey and I type "find Scrap". Once again the result is instantaneous. With the addition of the 1.0 version refinements there is no telling how far I will be able to take this functionality. Alfred's effect on my daily workflows has been immense, and if you consider that the basic version of Alfred is free, as in GRATIS, zero dollars, I wonder why you're still on this page, reading these words, and haven't instead started downloading this gem of an app yet.