How often have you had to dig to find that one key piece of information on your hard drive? Every day, probably! If you've heard about Apple previewing the next generation of it's OS codename "Tiger" this week at the World Wide Developer's Conference, you probably saw a couple of great shareware programs being imitated (some would say stolen!) by Apple. Most of the press about the uproar this week has gone to Konfabulator, with Apple using it's great widget design in one of the key new features, Dashboard. Well, there's another feature / application that will end up being more useful to you every day. Konfabulator's cool, but does it really save you that much time? Or is it just handy and pretty to look at? :>)

The application I'm talking about is Objective Development's LaunchBar, one of the handiest tools you'll ever use to find applications, pictures, documents, web pages, music, names, and more! This program is just fantastic - simply press "command-space" and up pops the unobtrusive LaunchBar window at the top right of your main desktop window. Start typing the first part of what you're looking for, and a list pops up that you can select from. I've stopped having to keep dozens of extra applications in my dock (or folders nested so I can more quickly access them) - simply press command-space, start typing the name of the application you want to launch, and it magically appears! A simple return on the right item launches it.

Let's be honest - time is money, and this is a very serious timesaver. It's been around for a number of years and has received MacWorld's top award of 5 mice by Ted Landau and he said "LaunchBar must be seen to be believed." I can completely agree with him in that statement. It will win you over and you'll not know how you got along without it. Obviously that's why Apple is patterning it's new Spotlight search technology after the same functionality that LaunchBar offers.

Don't want to wait to start using all of the cool features that are coming sometime next year with Tiger (10.4)? You don't have to! Download LaunchBar and give it a try - you won't be disappointed! I use it so frequently it truly has become second nature. And that's flattery for software that any company would be happy to receive. :>) There's even a free trial - you can't go wrong, it's really worth it!

Visit LaunchBar's home page to download.