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AppRocket

AppRocket is basically a Windows copy of MacOSX’s LaunchBar. It is an application launcher, that you control with the keyboard.

You just hit Alt+Spacebar, which makes the AppRocket interface slide down from the top of the screen. Then you enter the abbreviation for the program, bookmark, song, or file you want to open, and press enter. It learns as you use it, so you can pretty much make up your own abbreviations for things. For example I typed MSN and it originally thought I wanted to go to MSN Shopping, but I didn’t want to go there so I pressed the down arrow until I found MSN Messenger, which is what I wanted to launch. Now whenever I hit Alt+Space, then type MSN and press enter, MSN Messenger launches. I can also type AOL for AOL instant messenger, PS for Photoshop, CD for Corel Draw, NZ for NewzCrawler, etc.

The app itself is tiny and fast, with only a 700k download. The only quite major drawback to this application is that it requires the .NET framework to be installed, as well as Windows XP Service Pack 1. The .NET framework is a 25mb download, and I don’t even know how big Service Pack 1 is. Needless to say this makes what could have been a painless, fast, easy installation turn into a pretty huge undertaking if you don’t already have .NET and SP1 installed, which I would imagine most people don’t. After you install .NET and SP1, installing AppRocket itself is very easy, and one of the quickest and nicest installs I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a whole lot to ask for people to download .NET and SP1 just to use their application, and I would imagine it will keep a lot of people from using it that normally would if it installed like every other application.

Does anyone have a copy of the 1.0beta2 installer that they could give me? My version is 0.9.
I find that if I change the date to 10/15/03 on my pc, I can still run the program and then change the date back to the real date and it keeps working…