Today I went on a multifaceted Internet rabbit hole.  So many places to go on the Internet.

I forget what I was trying to do first… let’s start with what I did last and work backwards.

After setting up this innovative crowd sourcing application called Aardvark that allows one to get pretty good answers from people who should know what they’re talking about on any subject free I asked a few questions relating to the following:

Is impossible to install Internet Explorer eight on a pirate copy of Windows XP with service pack two?  Someone said all I needed to do was download Internet Explorer eight or install service pack three.  I’m doubtful about this because of various reasons… more research is required.  Perhaps I should rephrase my question better… have you actually done this before without any problems?  Don’t just do a quick google search and repeat what you found.

Then I asked Aardvark if anyone had a suggestion on the best software to manage my start menu programs list.  Normally when you go to your start menu and then go to your all programs list you have a never-ending list of programs that you have installed and even if you have been pruning down this list and removing stuff on a regular basis and organizing them you know that this takes time and is irritating.  The response I got was not very helpful… they just said that I could right click on any program in the menu and then click alphabetize.  That’s great that you can do that but it did not really answer my question.  However it did give me the idea that what I want is not a program to manage these but instead a program that allows me to search installed programs intuitively and then open the programs I searched for.  Because if I have this application there’s no need ever to go into the all programs menu .  So this realization bring me to my next search.

Before I had used a program called “launchy” that allowed you to do something similar… I uninstall the program because of some reason.  After a few searches I came across the following software:

Find and Run Robot otherwise known as FARR.  It claims to be able to do what I want which is to search my installed programs and open the program.  Then I found another program which piqued my interest.

Then I found this “Do” program… that appears to be able to launch programs as well as numerous other tasks such as Post your status to twitter, search your Google contacts, send e-mails, play music, search the web, launch applications, and search your desktop..  I’m figuring it might work well with my voice recognition software.  Nevermind… this is a Linux program only.

Another program called “Quicksilver” does the same things but only works for Apple computers.

My first problems with the find and run robot software or the following:
unable to get the shortcut command to work that would call up the search box.  With Google desktop you just press the control key twice and the search box comes up… trying to figure out how to change this now.

So now I’m testing out this software… at a comment to be e-mailed/updated when I update this post with my conclusions.