On Brendon's recommendation I've been using QuickSilver, a powerful keyboard-based launcher for the Mac. Once you've programmed some commands, you just hit the hot key to bring up QS, start typing in the command and it will auto-complete you command after a few keystrokes. Hit enter and you launch the app or whatever it is you programmed. You can make it do just about anything. I've set it up to connect to the brendoman.com command line interface so I can start making website changes quickly.

But I still use a PC part of the time, so I went looking for a similar program for Windows. Thanks to Leslie S. Russell, I was able to find PC-Com.

PC-Com was created by Boletrice Software and it works about like QuickSilver. Bring up PC-Com with a hot-key, start typing a command and press enter when the auto-complete is showing the right command. Three steps, your hands never leave the keyboard and you can do just about anything. You can launch programs, open web pages and files and search the web in various ways. It also has something that QS doesn't have: macros. You can record a complex set of mouse and keyboard actions, then play it back at an accelerated speed with a single PC-Com keyword. There is a free version available for download (limited to 100 keywords) and a pro version for $10. The keyboard is still the fasted way to interact with your computer, and PC-Com is the tool you need to be able to more with your keyboard.