Announcing Hook Productivity: File less. Search less. Access. – CogSci Apps®

Announcing Hook Productivity: File less. Search less. Access.

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Announcing Hook Productivity: File less. Search less. Access.

I am delighted to have revealed, yesterday, the latest CogSci Apps® invention, Hook Productivity. Hook enables you to immediately access the information that is most relevant to your current task. This keep you in flow — focused on creating, learning and problem-solving.

Hook is so new and versatile that its essence is distilled in several slogans:

  • “One app, infinite applications.™”
  • “File less. Search Less. Access.™”
  • “Hook links your digital life.™”
  • “Hook supplies the missing links in the world’s best OS for productivity, R&D, creativity, blogging, markdown, and learning.™”
  • “Desegregate your apps.™”

Hook enables you to link and access information regardless of whether the information is local, on the web or in the cloud. In fact, you can think of Hook as creating your own personal web which extends the world-wide web. This enables you to focus on and access information that matters most to you.

The Hook user interface is extremely simple. It consists of a popup window that you access with a keyboard shortcut (or an icon).

It’s simple: just invoke the Hook productivity window with a shortcut (such as ⌘⇧spacebar). From there you can

  • access items that you’ve linked to the current resource (whether they are local or remote!)
  • link items together;
  • copy the address of any adequately addressable item. Whether you’re in a web browser, the Finder, an email app, a Notes app, OmniFocus, Things… so long as the app is adequately scriptable you can get the address (but see Unsupported Applications – Hook if necessary);
  • reveal the current file in Finder (if it is a file);
  • and more …

Hook also offers a menu bar icon. For instance, you can drag a bunch of files on the Hook menu bar icon to link them together. And you can do the same with most adequately addressable resources (like web pages).

A new productivity tool for Markdown writers

Hook has special support for Markdown enthusiasts, enabling them to rapidly get fully formatted Markdown links to web pages in all the main web browsers, and to apply the same shortcut to local resources (files, emails, OmniFocus tasks, Things tasks, Agenda notes, etc.) One simple window enables you to access and create links to and from almost anything.

We’ve written some blog posts on Hook Productivity to illustrate using Hook with a couple of our favourite markdown apps, MailMate and Marked 2.

Context sensitivity and robustness

  • The links presented in the Hook window are specifically relevant to you.
  • What’s more, Hook links are robust, meaning that if the target of a link moves (assuming the target is a file), the Hook link will still work!
  • And Hook links are bidirectional

Status and availability of Hook

Hook is currently in public beta, free to try. (And to the best of our ability, we intend to always offer a free version of Hook, known as Hook Lite.)

Luc P. Beaudoin, 2019-01-31.
Metro-Vancouver, BC
Canada