Enso is here

My summer gift to you is in the form of a wonderful little program called Enso (http://humanized.com/enso/). Enso allows you to use text to navigate through your computer. It takes only a few minutes to get used to, and can save you a ton of normally-wasted time with random clicking tasks.

Don’t you have some folder on your computer that you are constantly opening? Maybe it’s your academic or club folder which you need to access about 50 billion times a day. Now think about how many times you have to click your mouse in order to get to it. What about how many times you access Facebook or Twitter every day? Firefox, click, address bar, click, type facebook.com, go, click. I think you get my point. Wouldn’t it just be easier to type facebook.com and have Enso do all the work for you?

Enso makes the transition from multiple clicks to one text commands super simple. There are no complicated commands or weird syntax. In fact, with Enso all you have to do is push your caps lock key and type “open www.facebook.com”.

Enso comes preprogrammed with a large number of commonly-used commands you might want to utilize. There are many common search engines like Wikipedia, Yahoo, Altavista, Google (ex. type “google the tack”).  Additionally, Enso commands include common websites like Ebay, Amazon, YouTube (ex. “youtube dexter”). These commonly used sites alone save me countless clicks through the day.

Enso also has some special features like a spell check. Check your spelling anywhere, no matter what program you are currently using. All you have to do is highlight the questionably-spelled text and type “spellcheck.” Another great feature is that Enso has a built in dictionary/thesaurus. No more dictionary.com typing for me.

Enso is also well-versed in the world of music players. Don’t you hate having to switch back and forth between your procrastinated paper and iTunes? Now you can just run your music player right from your word document. Just hit the caps lock key and type any of the commands: “play track” (random), “play song songtitle,” “play artist artistname,” “play genre genrename” and hit enter. It works like a charm. You can also switch between songs easily with  “next track” or “previous track.” It’s amazing how fast you can multitask with your fingers never leaving the keyboard.

The most amazing feature is that Enso comes with the ability to learn new commands. Just select the program or folder you want Enso to learn.  To open, type “learn as open” followed by your shortcut term. For instance, I love Netflix and access this site on a regular basis. In order to speed up this process, I highlighted the Netflix address, type “learn as open,” then my shortcut “netflix” and ka-bam, I am on the Netflix site.

I hope you all enjoy my 2010 end-of-the-year column gift to you. Good luck with finals, enjoy your summer, and for all you graduating seniors, good luck with all of your future endeavors! Go out there and make some waves!