RIFE has been announced in the Spotlight box of java.net again.

They make a clear mention of Drone which is very cool since it's the first open-source product of a series that we're releasing for RIFE. After Eric announcing his interest in adopting Drone, this shows that RIFE is clearly gaining in popularity. I'm anxious to see what the reaction will be once Bamboo (already deployed here), our RIFE forum, will be released to the public. Exciting times are coming ...

I've been looking for an easy and lightweight way to launch applications after certain keyboard combinations. Most applications I tried were much too heavy and did way too much.

Then I stumbled into Quicksilver. I doesn't do what I was looking for at all, but instead it offers a new paradigm that feels perfectly right after using it for a little bit.

Instead of having to define shortcuts for all the applications that I'm interested in, it indexes all applications, addresses, bookmarks, scripts, sherlock channels, music files. You access Quicksilver by pressing Command-Space and it provides you with a very cool transparent dialog where you can type in characters. According to the characters you enter, it looks for entries in it's catalog and offers you the possible actions that can be executed upon a match.

I also suspect that it intelligently remembers what your most common actions are and proposes those first. So to launch a Terminal, I just press Command+Space T Enter, for Mail this is Command+Space M Enter. Now I don't have to spend time trying to figure out which keyboard combination would be the most suitable, I don't have to configure them and I don't have to remember them. Also, if any new applications are installed, it instantly knows about those and I can start using them.

It always great when people try to offer innovative solutions for day-to-day problems. :-)