I love useful, time-saving utilities. When David Barnard of App Cubby gave us a demo of Launch Center's first iteration in January, I knew he had made one. Now, Launch Center Pro is available (US$2.99 for a limited time), improving upon its predecessor and earning a spot in my iPhone's dock. With a simple tap-and-slide, you can launch apps, perform actions and more. Here's my look at Launch Center Pro.

An action app

Launch Center Pro is an app of verbs. Search. Shoot. Call. Text. Add. In creating shortcuts you must pause and think about what you actually want to do. In a way, it's akin to creating an effective to-do list. For example, "Friday's presentation" is not an action step, but "outline presentation" is. The difference, of course, is the verb "outline." As the clever demo video above explains, "Messages is an app. Messaging your friend is an action."

Use

Think of Launch Center Pro as an intelligent iOS folder, or even a second Springboard, with two main benefits. First, it lets you launch applications. There are many apps that I use often enough to warrant addition to Launch Center Pro, but not quite enough to keep on my home screen. 1Password is a good example. Other apps are buried in folders. For example, Instacast and Rdio live in a folder labeled "Listen." Launch Center Pro lets me get right at them.

The app's other benefit is performing actions that are typically only available within apps themselves. For example, you can add an item to OmniFocus, add an event with location data to Agenda or view Facebook notifications. This is where the app really shines and saves so much time.

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Here's how it works. Launch Center Pro