Hook 1, 2, 3 Basic Concepts to Link Your Digital Life

Are you new to Hook? Or are you a seasoned Hook user? Whoever you are, this blog post will help you understand and explain three of Hook’s most beneficial innovations.

Thanks to Hook,

1. with one uniform gesture, you can obtain a link to almost any resource;
2. you can address and access essential information that is not normally addressable;
3. you have a minimalist, user-friendly graphical interface to get, see and use links to the information that matters most to you.

1. Uniform gesture

To get a link to the current item, just:

1. invoke the Hook popup window (with the ⌘⇧SPACE keyboard shortcut, a launcher, or the menu bar icon), and
2. use Hook’s “Copy Link” command (⌘C) or “Copy Markdown Link” (⌘⇧C).

That’s it! Now you can paste that link wherever you want. You can even use the Hook popup window to link the copied address to some other item. This enables you to instantly navigate between relevant information.

Think of it this way. You are no doubt familiar with copying the address of web pages. You know how useful that is. In fact, you would hardly imagine life without it.

Well, many apps provide a “Copy Link” function somewhere in their interface. Unfortunately, however:

1. there is no consistent name for this command across applications. Safari uses the term “address”. Firefox uses the term “location”. Some apps use the term “URL”. OmniGroup applications (like OmniFocus) use the expression “Copy as Link”.
2. Different applications store the command in different menus or parts of their UI’s.
3. The keyboard shortcut for this command (when available) varies across apps.

This variability is hard on memory. Looking up the equivalent of the “Copy URL” command (if it is in the app at all!) costs time. It tires you out. The Hookless situation is so bad that most people don’t even bother using links outside of web browsers. And yet we know from the web that links are potentially powerful.

Hook’s uniform gesture for obtaining links across apps means that you can use the same very simple incantation ( ⌘C in Hook), in any supported app, to get a link to the current item.

And as noted, if you like Markdown, then you can even make that a well formatted Markdown link.

2. Uniformly address all kinds of resources, not just web pages!

Oddly: many important apps (such as Finder, Apple Mail, Apple Notes, Spotlight) do not even provide a “copy link” menu item or (reliable) uniform addressing scheme (URL). And yet many of them have hidden ways to address their information resources (files, messages, etc.)

We at CogSci Apps have created a uniform address (“URL”) “scheme” called hook://. It enables you to reference all kinds of essential information that would otherwise not be addressable.

As a result, with Hook, you can easily get links to files, emails and more. It is very handy to be able to get a link to files, emails, etc. What’s more, Hook makes these links as robust as possible. So even if you move a file, the link will be useful. In fact, you can even delete the directory in which a file is stored, and then recreate it (e.g., by unzipping an archive, or using a version control system) and then the file links will normally still work.

It is also incredibly handy to be able to link to email messages. Has your boss or team member forgotten to answer your email? Instead of forwarding a new copy of the email, just send them a link to the original email! Ditto if you want to resume an old conversation or refer to prior conversations. That’s much nicer for them than to copy , quote or forward the entire email again.

Minimalist interface

Linking is one of the most important modern innovations. But it does not have to be complicated! CogSci Apps have created the simplest possible application to allow you to create, see and use links.

You can do everything with the Hook popup window.

And when you prefer to use “drag and drop”, you can drag and drop items on Hook’s menu bar icon to link them.

Summary: Hook 1, 2, 3

That’s it! Hook in three points. Hook provides:

1. a uniform gesture for getting links,
2. links for the previously unlinkable, and
3. all this in a minimalist graphical interface.

Hook 1.3 and beyond

Hook 1.3 , coming up soon, builds on these simple concepts. How far will our product road map take you? Well, just think of what web links have enabled… We’ve been imagining and are building a world that was unimaginable before Hook’s 1, 2, 3 fundamental concepts.