Gnome-Do

Gnome-Do is an incredibly useful and versatile program. Depending on what plugins you choose to work with you can do anything from find documents, search the web, look up definitions, open programs, send emails – all with just a few keystrokes. It gives instant access to most of the tasks that we use out computers for. The best way to demonstrate this is to show you some examples of what Gnome-Do can do you for you.

1. File & Folder Operations

   Traditionally, when we need to find a file and do something with it – open it for editing, rename it, copy it, etc – we would have to click out way through a series of folders to find the file we're looking for. With Gnome-Do, you simply type the name of the file. For instance, if I was looking for a file named “Resume”, I would just call up Gnome-Do (usually by pressing SUPER-SPACE) and start typing 'resume'. By the time I get to 'res', Gnome-Do has found the file.

You can then open the file by just hitting the ENTER key. If you want to do something else with the file, you press TAB, and then the DOWN ARROW button to see a list of other options.

To rename the file, you would select Rename from the menu], press TAB again, and type the new name.

To move the file, you would select Move from the menu and press TAB.

Using the DOWN ARROW button again will give you a list of folder to which you can move the file to. 

These options work with folders as well as with files. There are other options available as well, such as 'create archive', 'open with', and other handy functions that may vary with the plug-ins you have installed.

2. Programs

   You can quickly open any program you need by calling up Gnome-Do and typing the name of the program. The first few letters are usually enough for Gnome-Do to guess the program you're looking for.

3. Contacts

You can also use Gnome-Do to index your email contacts. If I wanted to send an email to Al Nutile and was too lazy to click my way through using webmail or evolution, I could just call up Gnome-Do and start type 'Al'. 

 



If I hit ENTER, it will call up an evolution window with a blank email addressed to Al. If I want to be really efficient (or lazy), I can hit the TAB key again instead of EMTER and get a little window in which I can write the text of the email.

 



4. Web Browsing

You can also open websites. You can do this either by typing the name of a site you have bookmarked, or by typing the url of the site. For example, if I have the local weather forecast bookmarked in Firefox, and the bookmark is named 'weather', I can simply type 'weather' into Gnome-Do and it will open the site in Firefox. If I wanted to open www.nationalpriorities.org, I would just type that in and press ENTER.

 

5. Miscellaneous

There are many other possibilities with Gnome-Do. For instance, it can hook into Google's calculator function. If, for example, I want to know how many ounces are in 4ml I would just call up Gnome-Do and type '4ml in ounces', then press ENTER.



The answer is instantly displayed.



This works for simple calculations as well – I can ask it to calculate 46*3454432, the sqrt of 454359087957, or any other mathematical function that I might need. It can tell me how many feet are in a fathom or inches in a light-year (3.72461748 × 10^17, if anyone's interested).