Start ++ is a definite enhancement for the Vista start menu. View pictures, play music, search with Google and Wikipedia, and do much more right inside your menu with this piece of software. Start ++ uses the search bar that is already in place on the start menu and allows you to use commands to do all these cool things. For example, when you type “g software,” you search for “software” using Google, then Start ++ uses the Vista start menu as an iframe to pull up the search results. Here is a list of other example commands you can perform using Start ++:

• play radiohead (starts playing a playlist full of Radiohead tracks inside Windows Media Player)
• pic dustin (this command would pull up pictures of me!)
• weather 98033 (pulls up the weather forecast for Kirkland, WA)
• d technology (looks up the definition for the word “technology”)
• imdb hancock (pulls up the Hancock movie profile page on IMDB)
• y revision3 (search for “revision3″ on Yahoo)
• l bill gates (search for “Bill Gates” on Windows Live)

Start ++ also allows you to add, export, and share your own commands with Vista’s start menu using a simple interface:

The software also features plug-ins for download so you can add even more functionality to the start menu. Go take a look at the plug-ins page to find a Digg, Twitter, and Google Reader plug-in. I can only imagine if a huge number of people get their hands on this and start making hundreds of plug-ins for different uses.

[get Start ++]