Shortcut system for use in a mobile electronic device and method thereof

A shortcut system for use in a mobile electronic device having several types of shortcuts allows a user to execute shortcuts of different types using a single mechanism. The shortcut system includes a display, an operating system, a shortcut data store, and one or more applications, including a shortcut application used to create shortcuts and edit shortcut information contained in the shortcut data store. The shortcut data store contains target information associated with applications of various types, indexed by a shortcut tag. When a new application is installed in the mobile electronic device, the user can add shortcut information associated with the new application to the shortcut data store. The target information can define content associated with an application. When a shortcut to content is executed, the associated application is launched and begins operating on the content data. Further, the shortcuts can be created with different types of tags.