Yes folks..it's true...rumors says that Mr. Jobs won't go to Macworld in 2009, and it will be the last Macworld event!
CopyPaste Pro: The Mother of All Multi-Clipboard Apps
Single copy-and-paste is SO last decade. Ever since the introduction of the first Mac in 1984, users could cut, copy, and paste images and text to a temporary storage area called the Clipboard, which allowed them to easily duplicate and move one item at a time from document to document, application to application. But soon, there arose a need for more clipboards, and an easier way to manage several clips at a time. Enter CopyPaste Pro.
The newest release of CopyPaste Pro has several extremely useful features, including:
Multiple Clips. Hit Command-C multiple times and your selections will be automatically copied to a new Clipboard. Pressing Command-V quickly pastes the contents of the most recent Clipboard to the screen. But press and hold Command-V, and a horizontal menu pops up, where you can scan through your Clipboards in the order they were added using a GUI similar to Cover Flow.
Editable Clips. Easily edit your text clips using Bean, a built-in open source word processor.
History of Clips. As soon as you cut or copy a selection, it is instantly added to a history list. At any time you can go through that list to find an item you copied or cut, even from days ago.
Clip Archives. Create permanent archives for clips that you use frequently, or that are important. Unlike the History of Clips, an Archive will always have the clips you add to it.
Multiple Views. Choose between three ways to interact with your clips: using the handy pop-up graphical browser, a contextual menu, or an icon in the menu bar.
Clip Tools. There are several handy scripts included that can help you do things ranging from extracting email addresses from clips, inserting or converting dates, doing calculations, or performing text transformations like uppercase, word wrap, and removing email quote indents.
I have found CopyPaste Pro to be indispensable when doing research, especially for articles, user manuals, and other documentation where I will often capture screenshots or snippets of text to include with my writing. It’s a snap to make multiple copies to the Clipboard, and then browse through the History of Clips to find the best one. It does take some getting used to, however—in particular, those of us who can do the copy/paste keystrokes with lightning speed will have to learn to pause slightly between keystrokes, or else CopyPaste Pro doesn’t recognize one action over the other, leaving you with the wrong selection on the Clipboard or the wrong thing pasted to your screen. For example, in Safari, I often duplicate the page I’m browsing onto a second tab. In the past, I held down the Command key and hit L (to put the cursor in the Location field), C (to copy), T (for a new Safari tab), and V (to paste the web address). Doing this set of key combinations quickly will only succeed at the first step, putting the cursor in the Location field. To adjust, I now let up on the Command key between each keystroke, and it works fine.
The software has been stable over the past several months, and the developer is quick to fix any bugs that do come up. At one point there was a conflict with another software app that uses Command key combinations, and working together, both companies fixed the incompatibility very quickly.
If you use copy/paste often, do yourself a favor and download the trial of CopyPaste Pro. With its fast, solid performance and an almost infinite number of Clipboards, you’ll never lose track of your clips again. CopyPaste Pro is a Universal Binary, and costs $30 from Script Software.
(Via MacApper.)
The strange economy of the App Store
A few App Store apps have already gotten the public browbeating for tweaking their prices, and here's another: as Johnathan notes, there's a new app on the top of the heap in the paid pile, and apparently the only reason 'Units Convertor' (sic) is there is because it used to be free.
We can't necessarily call them out for switching just to sit on top -- what would you do if you had a free app that was being downloaded like crazy and decided you wanted to make some money from it? But being that free apps far outweigh paid apps in terms of distribution, even the #21 free app can quickly jump to the top of the paid pile. We've already posted about how developers might be getting a raw deal out of the App Store (and some publishers have told us personally that they agree), but the economics are very interesting in there right now -- you've got a basically free economy, and considering that most of the apps out now are easy to make, it's just as likely that you'll see a free version of an app that does the same thing as a paid app.
Of course, what's happening in there actually mirrors what's happening out here with software: some of the best applications around are actually being given away for free. We're still in a strange place with the App Store and its pricing, and you have to think that eventually things will settle down and the developers who deserve to get paid will.
Use the iPhone Remote app without a wireless routerSomething that may be fairly overlooked, but useful is using the iPhone Remote Application when you don't have access to a wireless network. I love taking my Macbook Pro on the go and have fallen in love with the Remote App, but there's not always a wireless network availiable! A quick and simple fix for this is to create your own secure wireless network using your Mac.
A step by step process would look something like this:
- Click on the wireless icon in the menu bar and select Create Network.
- Choose a name. If you are around other locked or untrusted wireless signals, you will want to choose an unused channel. (I would say use the two channel rule, but you're not transferring data here.) Make sure you put a password on it!
- Open up the Network System Preferences panel. You'll want to create a new location to make it easier for future use, and it's easiest to stick with the default network settings. This step is optional, but if you're on the go, it...
(Via MacOSXHints.com.)
Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists
If you're anything like me -- and I sincerely hope you're not, for your sake -- you have a large iTunes music library, but the music that you like right now is only a small fraction of that total. (Yeah, that embarrassing '96 Dave Matthews Band album is getting pretty dusty.)
Since my musical tastes vary from day to day, and songs quickly fall in and out of my fickle favor, I love assigning ratings to the music I like this minute. I have a five-star rating for la crème de la crème, and a four-star rating for stuff that's pretty good. Three-star items are sadly relegated to history.
Next, I combine ratings with smart playlists: Now I can add and remove songs from my current rotation just by changing their star rating. I can do this on-the-go, too: Change a rating on my iPod, and the playlists are updated immediately, and eventually synced back to the computer.
Follow me across the jump to see how you can dynamically and efficiently manage your music as quickly as your tastes change.
Continue reading Mac 101: Stars and Smart Playlists
Change the icon used for zipped filesIf, like me, you find the default white zip file icon in 10.5 bland and boring, then it is quite easy to change it if you are using the built-in Archive Utility:
- Open up Finder and go to /System/Library/CoreServices.
- Find the Archive Utility, Control-click on it and select Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
- Navigate into Contents » Resources.
- Make a backup copy of bah-zip.icns (or any of the other compressed icons you'd like to change) by dragging the file to a folder in your user's home folder. The system will create a copy.
- Find an icon you'd like to use, and copy it into this folder, renaming it to bah-zip.icns. I chose to copy the nice green bah.icns file from this same directory, renamed it to bah-zip.icns, and then copied it back in. (You will need to enter your admin password to modify this folder.)
- Restart Finder or logout/login, and you will now have a nice customized zip icon ...
(Via MacOSXHints.com.)
First Look: Teleport, new VNC client for the iPhone
Jugaari's iPhone debut, Teleport (iTunes link), is a new VNC client for mobile remote control of a Mac or PC (not the super-awesome pseudo-KVM app). It's a $24.99 investment, and I don't know many people who are going to dish out twenty five clams for an iPhone utility, but I know plenty who are curious about it and frustrated about the App Store's lack of any 'try before you buy' mechanism. Here's a 'look before you buy,' either to help you make a decision or just to satisfy a curiosity.
Teleport is naturally subject to all the things that are intrinsically annoying about any VNC connection, which are then compounded by a (relatively) small screen and less-than-ideal network speeds; it's not the ideal way to access a remote machine. The options allow you to set the speed of the refresh rate, but 'fast' is slow, even on a local wireless network. Those annoyances are obstacles to be overcome, though, and I think that Teleport makes a valiant effort to provide a usable interface in light of these hurdles.
Check out the gallery for a mini-tour, and see the rest of this post for more impressions of Teleport.
Continue reading First Look: Teleport, new VNC client for the iPhone
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