While looking for interesting OS X apps recently, I happened upon a program called InstantLinks, available from Subsume Technologies. InstantLinks, shown in use at the right (click on the image for a larger screenshot), is a system service that is available in any application that supports OS X services (such as Fire and OmniWeb, to name two).
What does it do? From a services-aware application, you highlight a text string that you're interested in, such as a word, an address, or a URL. Then simply activate the InstantLinks service menu, and pick the action you would like performed on your selection. You can look it up in a dictionary, map the location, open the URL, search the web, or check a thesaurus.
It's an amazing example of some of the really neat stuff that I think we'll see coming out for OS X in the next few months. Highly recommended, if for nothing more than a peak at the future possibilities of OS X. Read the rest of the article if you'd like a detailed explanation for how to install and activate the progam (it's a bit different than a typical application).
How to install InstantLinks:
- Download the progam from this URL.
- Uncompress the download, preferably from a terminal window or by using OpenUp.
- After expanding, you'll have a folder called InstantLinks-2_0_0_0. Open this folder in a finder window.
- Open another finder window, and navigate to /Users/username/Library/Services/.
- Move (or copy) the InstantLinks program from the first finder window into the second.
- Logout and login.
This installation method will make InstantLinks available to the current user. I would imagine there should be a way to install it globally, but I didn't see a "Services" directory in the global "/Library" directory.
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