Here are 4 easy steps to get set up to open all the applications you use on a daily basis with one simple click of the mouse.

First: navigate to Applications > AppleScript > Script Editor.  Open Script Editor.  This is where we can write and save a simple AppleScript to open all the apps that we want to open.  You will see a window popup that looks like this:

Second: now we just have to write our script and it couldn’t be easier.  For each application that we want to open we write:

tell application “Mail”
activate
end tell

tell application “Firefox”
activate
end tell

etc. etc. for each application that we want to open.  You can hit ‘Run’ in the toolbar to see your script in action.

Third: Now we want to save our script so we can reuse it every morning.  Go to File > Save and save it as whatever name you would like, but save it to this location: Your_Home_Folder/Library/Scripts.  If a ‘Scripts’ folder does not exist you can go ahead and create one in this location.  This is where you should save all of your AppleScripts.

Fourth: At this point, you are basically up and running, you could just navigate to your scripts folder every morning, double click the script and run it to open your applications, but that doesn’t seem very efficient.  Instead, it would be great to have a button in our main menu bar that we can click to run this script.  Good news, we can do just that!  Navigate to Applications > AppleScript > AppleScript Utility and check ‘Show Script menu in menu bar‘. 

Now we have a little icon that we can click on.  When we click this icon we get a drop down of all our scripts.  At the bottom you should see your script.  Simply click on it to run it!

Bonus Material!

It would be just as great if we could easily quit all of our open applications at the end of the day with just one click.  Good news again, that is even easier to do!

Open up Automator in your Applications folder.  Choose ‘Custom‘ as your starting (this gives you a blank canvas to start with).  Make sure ‘Actions’ is highlighted and click on ‘library’.  In the column to the right of ‘library’, scroll down to ‘Quit All Applications’.  Click on this and drag and drop it into the empty space to the right.

Now all you have to do is save this script. Go to File > Save and name it whatever you like, but remember to save it to Your_Home_Folder/Library/Scripts.  Now, when you click on the AppleScript icon in the menu bar, you will see your ‘quit all applications’ script.  Simply click on it to quit all open applications.

I hope this article has been helpful and please let me know of any questions or other suggestions.

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I just received my first order today and everything went very smoothly.  It comes in a nice little branded alice.com box.  It was packed very securely so everything I ordered was intact upon arrival.  It even came with a very nice receipt.  I know that sounds insignificant, but little organizational details like that can go a long way and only further substantiate alice.com as a very legitimate service.

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This has never happened to me in all my time of owning my iPhone, but the screen completely locked up on me.  I wasn't sure what to do, but I tried holding down the power button and then the home button for a few seconds and it forced the phone to shutdown.  This doesn't seem to be very well documented so I thought I'd share!

So, if your iPhone ever freezes or locks up:

1. hold down the power button
2. press and hold the home button while still pressing the power button and after about five seconds it will power off.

As my first post, I felt obligated to establish two points. Firstly, I want to quickly introduce myself. And secondly, I would like to apologize for my lack of a customized theme.

I am 24 years old and am a web production designer for a fantastic new media group in St. Louis, Paradigm New Media Group. I work mainly with HTML and CSS in my role as a production designer at Paradigm, however I also love working with jQuery and am doing my best to learn more and more PHP, and am officially obsessed with WordPress (Shout out!). There is a lot more to know about me, but that will all be included in my “About Me” section when that eventually comes in to fruition.

Finally, I have to apologize for my default theme usage. It’s driving me nuts, but since we all know that “Content is King!” on the web, the more important thing is to have some useful, viable content on my site. Therefore that is goal number 1. After I finally get some of my posts up, I will begin working on a customized design and add some more pages to turn this into a site a web developer can actually be proud of. I hope to demonstrate some of my work, provide easy access to online resources I use on a daily basis, and let everyone in to my world as a computer nerd. Although I don’t actually “design” in photoshop on a daily basis in my role at Paradigm, I actually do enjoy getting my hands a little dirty and breaking into the design realm, so I will be creating a customized theme for my site very soon. In the meantime, please bare with me and hopefully you can find some useful information on my site.