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Open Thread: What's your killer app?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2006
The other day I was talking with someone about the novel and non-obvious ways that people use Excel in their work and home life. Gotta say, I've personally seen some pretty amazing stuff happen when people take a favorite app, get really good at it, then bend it to their will. (And Excel is perfect for this.) This tracks to Danny's Life Hack concept by which the alpha geeks were achieving lofty heights of productivity partly by mastering 1-3 "killer apps" -- then using them to solve most of their information and functional problems in fairly novel ways. So my question for you: What's your killer app? Is there one place where 80% or more of your activity takes place (by choice)? Vim? Excel? Perl? Firefox? Post-it Notes? What's yours and when did you realize you'd become a badass at using it? 106 Comments
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 I'm surprised no one has...Submitted by aFlex (not verified) on August 21, 2006 - 9:39pm.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned del.icio.us yet. This is such a tremendous research tool for me. I'm actually really annoyed at most other software that uses tags, haven't been able to do it as well as del.icio.us. I love the auto-complete and recommended tags features. I'm a big fan of the small apps that make a big difference in my life. So simple and so flexible. And I'm increasingly relying on the tools that I can use online, so I can work just as easily at the office as I can from home. Or on my Girlfriend's computer where I'm writing this now. del.icio.us Gmail TextEdit OmniOutliner Backpack Also, this one might not really count because it's more of a feature, but I rely heavily on the built-in spellchecking feature of OS X. It's so useful, it actually keeps me from using Firefox. » POSTED IN:
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