I recently replaced Spotlight with Alfred and realized how much I was missing out. It's surprisingly faster and cleaner. I would really suggest it to anyone who haven't tried it yet.
Quick test in Alfred: Seems to have learned that "to" = "todo.taskpaper" after 1 try.
Alfred feels like it was very much an "inspiration" for the new Spotlight but as is often the way with little helper type apps, if it's good enough, sooner or later it will get rolled into the OS.
The business model Joel Spolsky referred to as grabbing nickels from the path of an on-coming steamroller.