MEDOLOGY

Control Pad

Launch anything, control your media player and perform any computer-oriented function with just a few taps on your underused numpad.

Multimedia keyboards have become all the rage these days as they make it easy to access a ton of features, such as launching a browser or a favourite program, controlling the volume, media playback, etc. But what do you do if you have a standard keyboard? And more importantly, what about all the tasks that your multimedia keyboard is still unable to accomplish?

For all such scenarios, here’s a handy application that will turn your underused number pad into a superb launcher and control mechanism.

We have featured application launchers before, such as Launchy, but the problem with that is the fact that you have to type in your desired program’s name, or at least the first few letters. For a hotkey element, Control Pad is a lot better.

Once installed, the program sits quietly in your system tray till you call it up for a task by simply holding down the asterisk key on your numpad for a second.

A small transparent pop-up bubble will ask you to enter a number into the field. By default, 7 minimises a window, 8 restores a window, 9 closes a window and 5 minimises all windows. Everything else is up to you!

Configure a hotkey is very simple too. For example’s sake, let’s say you want to map ‘1’ to open your browser. Bring up the command box by holding down asterisk and type 1. Then simply press the backslash key next to your asterisk and Control Pad will throw up a window that asks you to choose a command for ‘1’.

Using the ‘…’ button, you can browse to where your browser is installed. Once the path appears in the box provided, just hit enter and you’re good to go!

Alternately, if you want to assign a certain action to the key, you can choose from the parantheses ‘{}’ button to choose to launch a certain default application, control your media player, control the system volume, control your browser or even assign it as one of your keyboard’s other keys!

The number you choose isn’t limited to single digits, so you can assign as many hotkeys as you want. With the amount of control it gives you over your computing experience, there’s no name more apt that ‘Control Pad’ for this one.