There is one app heavily used by Johnny, named Alfred http://www.alfredapp.com
It is good for launch tasks by typing command. For example, I want to look up a work I don’t know I can type:
LAUNCHKEY + define + WORD_I_DONT_KNOW
and it will open the dictionary in Mac for explanation.
It also have a powerful function called WorkFlow. It allows you to combine multiple action at once. Recently I wrote a work flow to launch Transmit to sync the daily db dump folder on OA production server because I noticed I pretty much have to do this every other day.