February 2011 

I'm still learning how to use the app but have been incredibly happy with it so far.

I first heard about ActiveWords on a GTD podcast offered by David Allen's folks.  And to be perfectly honest, after about a few minutes of listening to the podcast I was not impressed.  I didn't see the value in ActiveWords and thought to myself, "I can just as easily do those things by switching to the application I want and opening a browser and typing in the URL, or by navigating to my window shortcut menu with the mouse, etc."  I just didn't know why anyone would pay to be able to use the keyboard for shortcuts.

Then I listened to the full podcast on the way to work one day earlier this week and decided to actually pay attention to how much time I spend doing the same repetitive tasks.  If the GTD folks thought highly of ActiveWords then it had to have some value.  Later that day while I was at working doing the same things repeatedly and thinking about how much cumulative time I was wasting, I started getting annoyed.

So I downloaded the program and programmed an ActiveWord to open an URL I use many times throughout the day.  After just one use I realized I'd been wasting a lot of time I didn't have to waste.  In that single moment I did a 180 degree turn with regard to my opinion about ActiveWords.

I've been adding more ActiveWords as I find uses for them, and I can't begin to describe how much more efficient my work has become in just 2 days.  I plan on introducing ActiveWords to my coworkers some time soon after I've had more time to play with it.  However, we are a small startup company so if there are any additional purchases, there won't be a lot of them.  ;)

I absolutely LOVE the scripting feature.  I used that (with some help from a Google search) to figure out how to open a personalized email template with just a few keypresses.  That is just amazing.  And after creating just one text replacement ActiveWord and using that to input the full path of a commonly used directory in an image upload form, "giddy" probably best describes how I was feeling.

Thank you for developing ActiveWords and continuing to support it.

I'm sure I will be getting a lot of use out if it in the years to come.

Melissa C