What if you could bundle applications together so that one click – one execution – will open them all. Lacuna Launcher is a contribution to Donation Coder’s NANY 2009 challenge. What does it do? The portable software will launch all applications that are specified in a text document that gets loaded during application start.

Unzipping the software will reveal the application itself and a text document that contains a link to Notepad. This is being used as an example and can be modified accordingly. Just place one application per line including its full path in the text document. You can also point the application to shortcuts in case you want to launch applications with startup parameters.

There is also the possibility to start Lacuna Launcher with startup parameters. You can use it to launch application groups by pointing each shortcut to a different text document on the computer. The shortcut makes use of the two optional parameters delay and pause. Delay specifies the time in seconds before the first application will be started while pause defines the idle time between the application launches.

Lacuna Launcher can be used to delay the startup of applications during Windows startup by moving a shortcut to the application into a Windows startup folder. This is an alternative to the startup software we covered earlier today.

Delayed Exec is a free software program to delay the execution of startup programs. It displays all applications that are started during system start including their title, command and the user.

Applications can be moved into the delayed startup applications table where they will be executed in order using the delay interval specified by the user. The delay interval is set in milliseconds, the default being 15000.

The startup software is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5. An alternative to Delayed Exec is Startup Delayer which does not require the Microsoft .net Framework.