Reader Saad Baig’s desktop shows what a Windows desktop could look like if you made the Windows 7 Superbar really “super”, by adding desktop widgets directly into the taskbar, easily accessible even with maximized applications. More »

To accomplish this hack, Ryan assembled a visual basic script (VBS) file that sends the email using Gmail's SMTP server—the email addresses are hard-coded but the subject line can be entered directly in Launchy.

If you want to use this trick for yourself, there's just a few steps to follow along—first, create a new *.vbs file and paste in the following contents, modifying the bold text with your own values.

Set iMsg = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
Set iConf = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
Set Flds = iConf.Fields
schema = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusing") = 2
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpserverport") = 465
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpauthenticate") = 1
Flds.Item(schema & "sendusername") = "MYACCOUNT"
Flds.Item(schema & "sendpassword") = "PASSWORD"
Flds.Item(schema & "smtpusessl") = 1
Flds.Update

With iMsg
.To = "EMAILADDRESS"
.From = "NAME <EMAIL>"
.Subject = wscript.arguments.item(0)
.HTMLBody = message
.Sender = " "
.Organization = " "
.ReplyTo = " "
Set .Configuration = iConf
SendEmailGmail = .Send
End With

set iMsg = nothing
set iConf = nothing
set Flds = nothing

Now that you have your script created and ready to go, open up Launchy’s Plugins tab in the options panel, and create a new Runner command pointing to the script. The key step here is to use "$$" in the arguments field—the quotes are important!

Since the example uses “tome” as the command, you can just type “tome” into Launchy, hit the tab key, and then type the subject of the email message. If all goes well, you should see a new email in your Gmail account with the same subject line.

This tip can be used for much more than just sending yourself emails, however—you can make a copy of the script and adjust the To field to quickly send emails to Remember the Milk or any number of other services that accept new items via email. You could even modify the script further to pass in further parameters to your RTM tasks if you really wanted to get geeky with it.Thanks, Ryan!

If you’d rather use your web browser, you can open a new Gmail compose window directly from Launchy. For more on Launchy power tips, read our feature on taking Launchy beyond application launching.

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