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Open Thread: What's your killer app?

The other day I was talking with someone about the novel and non-obvious ways that people use Excel in their work and home life. Gotta say, I've personally seen some pretty amazing stuff happen when people take a favorite app, get really good at it, then bend it to their will. (And Excel is perfect for this.)

This tracks to Danny's Life Hack concept by which the alpha geeks were achieving lofty heights of productivity partly by mastering 1-3 "killer apps" -- then using them to solve most of their information and functional problems in fairly novel ways.

So my question for you: What's your killer app? Is there one place where 80% or more of your activity takes place (by choice)? Vim? Excel? Perl? Firefox? Post-it Notes? What's yours and when did you realize you'd become a badass at using it?

T. Wise's picture

I still use Ecco Pro...

I still use Ecco Pro (even though it was discontinued by Netmanage in 1997. The Notepads - with fully customizable columns - make it a remnarkably flexible Outliner and Database, allowing you to enter information randomly, assign values, and then see that information in different ways.

It is my daily bin for keeping small notes ... it is my project management software ... and it is where I compile and organize research.

 
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