Blaze Launches Applications And Automates Repetitive Tasks
Windows: Applications launchers are plentiful and since Windows Vista there has been a built-in launcher in the start menu. Blaze however rolls application launching into a package with task automation. As you work it suggests ways to automate your workflow.
Not only does Blaze act as a Launchy-style application launcher but it also monitors your work and leaps into action when it appears that it could help you by automating the task.
Here is a simple example: You create a text file and name it Temp1.txt, then another named Temp2.txt, by the time you create Temp3.txt Blaze will ask you how many files you wish to create based on that numbering scheme and will create them for you.
A more complex example involves repetitive tasks inside a spreadsheet or document. As you continue to do certain tasks, like alter text within cells, Blaze will follow the pattern until the pattern is clear and then suggest that it take over. You can tweak the rules and then hand it over the Blaze to trudge through. The quick guide from the Blaze website covers a variety of tasks that Blaze can automate and includes examples, well worth a read over if you’re considering trying Blaze out.
Check out the website for more screenshots and examples of Blaze in action. Blaze is freeware, Windows only.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@malibu66: there's nothing wrong with .net 3.5 ...
Amazing, I always try to use Find and Replace when possible, but sometimes I would like to number stuff as well. Hopefully this will help
njven
@BasilComfy: Gnome Do is a launcher, but doesn't have the automation capabilities
@Navin R Johnson: Apparently you still have to press a key to bring up the dialog; it just flashes the systray icon to let you know it's detected a possible thing to automate.
olliebean
@Gabriel Barata: Gabriel - Excellent work so far with this application! I have been a Launchy user for a long time, but I downloaded Blaze and will test it out for a while. One thing that Launchy 1.25 (but not 2.x, which uses a different architecture and broke all earlier plugin) has is an advanced math plugin called Mathy that allows constants like e and pi and also has more mathematical functions, like log and sqrt.
Good luck developing this application further!
slip
I'm very tempted to leave executor now for this, but executor is customized to my liking so much that it's gonna be hard, but the spell checker and automation in this program look phenomenal. gonna give it a whirl and compare memory and cpu usage to that of executor.
@malibu66: ta 4 d comments (d .net thing & ndroid:)
legolasgreene
@UnMicD: only if the time it will take to automate a task is less than the time it takes to do every iteration manually... I've seen people spend 6 hours automating a repetitive task that could have taken them 4 hours to do manually
jlarroulet
@apex2000: Well that's odd then because I keep getting an error that says "Bad end of central directory record" when I download in Chrome (it only downloads 5.1 Mb out of 10) but it works in Firefox. Thanks for posting so I could take another look.
Ferguson1015
To anyone using launchy, I recommend googling on nDroid and giving that a try. I dumped launchy for nDroid some time ago; it is built on Autohotkey which I think has been on Lifehacker before. I really disliked the way that Launchy had to be set manually for custom commands. I found just editing text files (the nDroid way) much more convienent.
Anyway I'll be trying this and comparing to nDroid.
Addendum--
DOH! Blaze needs .NET 3.5... Sorry won't be going there. Don't need the bloat.
malibu66
@Ferguson1015: Yep, I don't believe in repeating a task. If you have to do it more than once, may as well automate it.
@mawcs: The last version of Blaze, v0.4.7.7, displays a MessageBox with the error
description. Could you attach a print screen of the MessageBox to the Bug Tracker on Source Forge?
Thanks!
Gabriel Barata
Seems good to me. I'm going to give this a try for a few days and compare it to Launchy. On first trial, it already seems as though it could be better.
apex2000
@shallnot: You can still make the ultimate decision about what your apps do. This just app just helps you with those boring, repetitive tasks that we all want to get rid of.
apex2000
@Gotlactose: I think what shallnot is getting at is that software is often incredibly bad at predicting what you want to do and automating it. Witness Word's attempts to auto-format for you... more annoying than helpful most of the time.
That being said, I'll give this a shot, but I'm skeptical that it will be much more useful than the Word example.
@Ferguson1015: I just installed it on W7 Ult., and it seems OK. Does everything Launchy does and it just remains to be seen whether it is truly more useful than Launchy, which I have used for so long now I cannot remember.
apex2000
It looks like you're trying to write a letter...
corneliuscrab
@Ferguson1015: It doesn't appear to be compatible with Windows 7 quite yet. Shame.
Ferguson1015
Could this be the end of launchy for me? we will see, i will make sure to donate to launchy if I ditch cause it has been great for me fo so long...
stathiz
Definitely worth a look since repetitive tasks are the bane of my existence.
Ferguson1015
@shallnot: They're only in a monkey see, monkey do process as of now, so hopefully you don't start killing humans and your computer asks you "oh would you like some help automating that". THEN it'd be judgement day.
I'm gonna try this out.
I really don't like my apps to think on their own...I decide what I want them to do...
shallnot
I'm eager to try this out, I think this kind of software is a good idea.
The indexer crashes on me every time it tries to start. :(
I can see that getting in the way when you only intended to do something say three times, then you have to deal with a dialog box. I'm still curious though. Perhaps I'll try it out.
Kinda creepy and nice at the same time. Creepy cause it keeps an eye on what you're doing and can suggest what you're going to do, and nice cause it does that.
onaclov2000