Quicksilver 1.0.0 is out and look what Android phones are used for!

If you have grown tired of using a mouse to launch your apps, consider a keyboard-based launcher. They can speed you up.

The keyboard launcher program to which all other program launchers-Mac, Windows, and Linux-are compared has finally come out of beta. Yes, Quicksilver is now at version 1.0.0. This version is for OS X 10.6-10.8, but the Web site has earlier versions for OS X as far back as 10.3!

Is it the best program launcher? That’s a matter of opinion. I use Objective Development’s Launchbar myself on my production machine. I’m sure devotees of Alfred and Butler could tell you why their launcher is the best. But Quicksilver is the basis of comparison for all of these keyboard launcher programs.

In other news, an Android phone goes into orbit:

"At a time when the who’s who of the mobile world are busy strutting their stuff at the Mobile World Congress, Surrey Space Centre (University of Surrey) and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) Ltd are celebrating a mobile launch of their own. Except that theirs was unlike any other cellphone launch in history — a launch in the most literal sense.

The two Surrey, England-based organizations now have the distinction of designing the world’s first smartphone-powered satellite, the STRaND-1 (Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration-1), which was successfully launched into orbit aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on Monday, along with several other payloads. In doing so, they have beaten the mighty NASA, which announced similar plans last year, to the punch."



I’ll stand by my prediction, though,that the first woman on Mars will report back to us via her iPhone 20S.

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog