Tapdex is a preference pane that enables you to access your Address Book contacts with a user-defined hot key.
A new version (3.0) is now a universal binary and supports the F13-16 function keys.
It’s very easy and quick to use. Hit your hot key and Tapdex’s search window pops up. Type in the name and the search results narrow in real time until you are presented with the contact you are looking for:
Does this screen remind you of anything? That was my first thought too — BuddyPop.
Tapdex is a kind of “Lite†implementation of BuddyPop. It does not have the rich feature list of BuddyPop (support for Skype, X-Lite and Vonage, Bluetooth SMS, etc) but it is free.
With Tapdex you can launch an email in Mail.app by clicking on the contact’s email address, get a phone number in large type or map an address, which might be all you want to do.
Tapdex is freeware (although there is a USD 7 “Pro†version that removes a small advertisement) and is available from the developer’s web site 
.
Why would anybody use this instead of Quicksilver?
I prefer ABMenu. Freeware. No typing required to look up an address.
MatonMacs: Exactly!
Once you start using QS, users tend to look for ways to maximize their “muscle memory” and rely on QS features that do some or all of what little apps like this do. At least, I do. QS has replaced many little apps and techniques for doing things like this.
Well, I’m a Quicksilver user myself, but not everyone is.
And I think it is fair to say that BuddyPop and TapDex both require less keystrokes and are more efficienct than Quicksilver for their one particular task. Unless I am missing something.
TapDex looks wife-compatible. Quicksilver would be wife-daunting. For my wife anyway.
@Goodinuf: ABMenu isn’t universal binary. And there’s no room to spare on the menubar for many of us with 1024×768 displays.
I think our wives must have been related in a previous life. They have a love for the “whoosh” sound in common too, if I remember.
Yep, you remember.
Fewer keystrokes? Really?
1) Invoke QS
2) type first and last letters of contact name
3) “There is no step three” :)
well that’s not exactly right, but it hit TAB and then select what you want to do: compose email (which is my default so that when I want to send an email to somebody, I just invoke QS, type the first and last letters, hit enter and a Mail Message window pops up) or show contact or edit, etc. etc. Much more useful in my opinion.
PopBuddyPop doesn’t.
And it won’t Quit.
And it wants ten dollars.
Plus, it doesn’t do what Tapdex’ free version does: function.
So.
Hey, QS is just too much for the most of us, simple folk ;-)