ActiveWords
September 12th, 2007 by Chuck Sharp
I’m trying out a pretty interesting program called ActiveWords. It uses a list of ‘activewords’ that you define to perform a variety of tasks on your PC, such as load a specific website, start a program, open a file folder, open a specific document, replace the word with some text, and many tasks that can be defined using a simple scripting language. By default, this programs shows up as a skinny toolbar at the top of the screen. No matter what you’re doing on the PC, it watches the word you’re currently typing.
When it recognizes a word you type as an activeword, you can either hit the spacebar or hit F8 to run the activeword, depending on how the word is configured. It’s very easy to create new words, I think it’s going to be great time saver. Here’s a screenshot of some of my words:
The lines in blue text are free word sets that you can download from their website. Cool stuff. Now, this program costs $50, but that license allows you to use it on all of your PC’s, if I understand it correctly. I’m currently using the free 60 day trial.
I also like using shortcut keys like Win-U or something, which cannot be configured as an activeword. So, I use AutoHotKey as well. This program is free, provides much of the same functionality as activewords, but it’s not as intuitive on either its configuration or the use of shortcut keys vs words. It has its place on my computers, for sure.
ActiveWords: http://www.activewords.com/ ($50)
AutoHotKey: http://www.autohotkey.com/ ($free)
Technorati Tags: productivity, freeware, software review
Entry Filed under: Productivity, Review
3 Comments Add your own
1. Peter J. Weldon | September 13th, 2007 at 5:00 am
Just noted your write up on ActiveWords and I offer a clarification.
Your statement that you cannot configure ActiveWords to execute keyboard shortcuts is not true. Check out the ActiveWords Scripting Language: http://www.activewords.com/scriptinglanguage.html.
For example, u can be an action in an ActiveWord Scripting item.
Best regards.
2. Chuck Sharp | September 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Thanks for the note, Peter. Sorry for being unclear, but what I was trying to say was that it appears you cannot assign a shortcut key to run an AW script. I actually use keyboard combinations within several of the AW scripts already.
In other words, I could create an activeword called ‘word’ that starts Word, but I can create an AutoHotKey keyboard shortcut like-W to start Word. Same result, different means.
Thanks again for helping me clarify. –Chuck
3. Buzz Bruggeman | September 16th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Chuck..
I collected a lot of scripting ideas here:
http://buzzmodo.typepad.com/buzznovation/2006/03/activewords_and_3.html
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Buzz
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