Coverflow mock-ups seem to be all the rage (see yesterday’s “Coverflow for people”).

Today hot off the Quicksilver forums comes a Coverflow mock-up for a new “Leopardised” Quicksilver interface, created by Foood:

Hmmm…. I’m in two minds about this. When does that delicate balance so beloved by Mac users between aesthetic appeal and functional utility become unstuck? It must be somewhere around this point.

I think I’ll stick with my Cube, slightly tweaked (see the before and after shot below) for larger action icons to each side, which stops me having to squint too much.

Fancy fooling around with your own Quicksilver interface, but don’t want to go the whole Coverflow hog? There are some pointers in an old Hawk Wings post. quicksilver, coverflow, not apple mail, not mail.app, interface design, productivity

As Quicksilver fans all over the world know, the Blacktree web site has been down since at least last Friday.

Now it’s back. Developer Alcor says that the site was down due to “a plugin downloading bug (and a subsequent server overuse)”.

You can now download the latest Leopard-friendly build of Quicksilver and install all the plugins your heart desires (quite a lot in my case).quicksilver, productivity, leopard, mac osx, 10.5

Do It is a very clever little task manager app with almost ever option one could hope for — iCal and Address Book integration, a Quicksilver plugin, syncing, lists for each context, skins and more. (See the extensive review in an earlier Hawk Wings post).

The developer has just released Do It 2.4 which adds localisations for Russian, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch and Traditional Chinese, and a few other tweaks like smarter item sorting in its to-do lists.

Since I last looked at it, other new features have been added, including extra options for handling completed tasks:

This is an application worth checking out. If my heart didn’t already belong to MailTags , I’d be using it myself.

Do It is donationware and available from the developer’s web site .productivity, task manager, to-do lists, ical, address book, quicksilver, syncing, contexts,

A poster on macOSXHints has posted an applescript for Quicksilver which provides a quick list of words, characters and lines in the form of a Growl alert.

After copying the text of the script to Script Editor and saving it off in your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions folder, all you need to do is select some text, activate a “Command window with Selection” and then type “word” (or whatever matches the name you gave to the script when saving),:

The Growl alert is quick and simple:

Of course, this is not the only way to get a word count in Quicksilver.

Spell Catcher X’s statistics service is available within Quicksilver and provides even more information, including how much fog is in your prose:

Spell Catcher X is shareware (USD 39.95) but good enough to be in my Top Ten Things every Mail.app user should have. not apple mail, word count, characters, words, applescript, quicksilver, productivity, tips, growl

ConceptDraw Lab has produced a little Dashboard widget that “partially implements Getting Things Done” by allowing for the quick creation of iCal to-dos without the need to open iCal.

It works by presenting each calendar in iCal as an Inbox, which can be selected from a drop-down menu at the top of the widget.

Entering text then creates to-dos attached to the selected calendar.

In the Next Events view, it displays all events scheduled for today.

Despite my normal charitable outlook, I struggled to see how this would gain a place in someone’s GTD toolbox.

Event Maker remains the tool of choice for creating iCal events and to-dos for those not using MailTags or Quicksilver (one, two Hawk Wings post on Quicksilver and iCal) to do the same job.

For power and ease of use Event Maker is hard to beat.

Perhaps I am becoming a “Productivity snob”. It’s not always about power. For some people this might be just the ticket and serve as an excellent bucket for collecting things to do.

GTD widget for iCal is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .ical, to-do, events, calendars, GTD, getting things done, not apple mail, quicksilver, productivity, widgets, dashboard

How I haven’t seen this before, I don’t know.

Do It (formerly known as ToDo) is a very nifty, tricked-out task or to-do management app that features everything but the kitchen sink — Address Book integration, Quicksilver plugin, syncing, lists for each context, skins and more.

In the app’s readme file, the developer describes it as “a small application to manage categorized to do lists. Each to do item can be linked with a file on your computer, a URL, such as the address of a web site, or a contact from your address book. The linked file or URL can be opened directly from the Do It window.”

The interface is nicely done.

Clicking the orange arrows moves from one category (or Context for GTDers) list to the next, and items within each are ordered by priority.

If an item has a file or URL linked to it, clicking the small arrow on the right jumps to the file or web page.

Double-clicking the item’s title allows it to be edited. To edit other details of the item, you need to click the “i” button at the bottom or use ⌘-I:

The details are stored in a “MailTags-like” smoked glass pane.

Hovering the cursor over “To Do …” slides down a Notes field and the “Deadline …” (not visible here because it is expanded already) opens up options to add reminders for the task in iCal, use an alarm and something called “Auto upgrade priority”.

I couldn’t work out what that last options does, but it sounds pretty cool.

Dragging a file from Finder or a URL from your browser over the Linked Item box stores it with the task. Here you see the URL of Do It’s web site, but it could just as easily be the TextMate draft of the post.

Do It is designed to be skinned and the developer maintains a list of user-submitted skins:

Quicksilver nuts like me will love the fact that the developer has written a Quicksilver plugin for Do It.

Install it from the Do It menu, quit and relaunch Quicksilver and creating to-do is just a Quicksilver activation keystroke away:

After hitting return, a supplementary dialog appears allowing you to assign the new to-do to the category or context or your choice:

In another nice piece of integration, Do It comes with an Address Book plugin which offers contextual menu options to set reminders to email or phone people in your Address Book:

A similar additional screen lets the reminder be assigned to the category of your choice.

Syncing with .Mac options are controlled within the app’s Preferences.

As if all of that is not unbelievable enough, Do It is freeware.

You can get a copy of it from the developer’s web site .not apple mail, productivity, ical, to-dos, task management, quicksilver, syncing, address book, plugin, Jeepers this is slick

Quicksilver , the app launcher and all-round productivity-enhancing wonder app, is full of surprises.

Just when you think you are getting on top of it, some little thing comes along to remind you how little you know of its mysterious wonderfulness.

A few days ago I read something on the Quicksilver forum that was completely new to me. Simple. Smart. But utterly unknown to me.

If you hold a keystroke down for a few seconds it actually launches the selected app without the need to hit the Enter key. How about that?

Just hold down the “m” key and Mail launches:

Wonderful. Quicksilver is a like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. not apple mail, productivity, quicksilver, keystroke, the simple things in life are the best