In the thick of things, I have about 4 to 8 different applications running on both my monitors and quickly opening various folders and launching applications or command lines is a pain. Using Start | Run has a peculiar problem - you can't enter too many things - the history is limited. And I hate running Start | Run everytime, its too inefficient.
So, today, while working, I quickly cobbled together a quick solution QuickNuke. I linked to one of the MM keys on the keyboard. It sits in the systray, and does not load automatically on startup. Hit the launch key and you get this window. It's explorer powered. Drag any shortcut (or an item while holding ALT) into this window and it will make a shortcut!
Double-click the shotcut, and you're done. Hit escape to hide the window.
This is very crude at the moment, but I will whip it up into shape soon.
This application is released under the IDGAC (I-dont-give-a-crap) license, so feel free to download it from http://shrinkster.com/gbk. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.