John Lawlor

ActiveWords, is a computer desktop productivity tool that automates many common activities that users perform every day. As you type, ActiveWords logs each word, even if a text editor is not being used. Once the appropriate function key (F8) is pressed, the action associated with that key word is performed. Actions can be any of the following:

• Substitute text
• Launch a programme
• Open a document
• Navigate to an Internet site
• Send an email
• Open a folder
• Run a script.

This is a great time saver and I have become a fan already. It cuts out a lot of pointing and clicking and makes life on the desktop just that little bit easier.

I use the keyword “outlook”, followed by F8 to open Outlook. I email several people regularly and by associating a keyword with them, in seconds I can open up a new Outlook email already addressed to them. I also use a few documents regularly and a short keyword opens each of them for me. There are a number of add-ons available for the product that are quite useful. These provide pre-defined keywords and menus for use with popular Internet services such as Google, MSN and Yahoo.

At the moment, I understand that ActiveWords is only available for the Windows platform.

You can download a free 60-day trial from the ActiveWords website. I was very pleased, shortly after downloading the programme, to be contacted by Buzz Bruggeman, one of the owners of the business, offering to go through the programme with me on a Skype call. Now that’s what I call service!

So why not check it out and if you like it, leave a comment and let me know.

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A new search engine was launched today with the intention to rival Google as the search engine of choice on the Web. Cuil (apparently it means “wisdom” in Irish) boasts that is searches three times as many pages as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.  Cuil indexes pages based on their content and relevance, rather than on popularity metrics.

I did a short test with it this morning against Google and found that I got significantly different results; I am not sure whether they were better or not, but some obvious ones that showed in Google did not show early in Cuil. Nevertheless, the presentation of search results, with some summary text and images, is very attractive and I liked it. I am certainly going to give it a try.

One important differentiator with Cuil is its privacy policy, which states that the search engine does “not collect any personally identifiable information, period.” They don’t keep logs and don’t store cookies. As concerns about privacy on the Internet grow, this is welcome; if it lasts, of course.

I intend to use Cuil to see if I will shift from Google. Check it out!

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