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Smoking Apples (I love smokingapples.com) recently did a round-up on clipboard managers. Lots of good information, but they didn't mention my favorite clipboard app, SavvyClipboard by BlitzClick Software, which can compete with and work circles around some of the apps mentioned in the Smoking Apples article. While some of these apps have really nice interfaces and are pretty to look at (dangling preposition), they just don't do everything I want or are too obtrusive. I don't want to feel like I'm working hard to use the clipboard. I want it to just be there, with me using mostly key commands to copy and paste. I have downloaded and tried out more clipboard apps then I can count, and the one that works best for me and does just about everything I want is Savvy Clipboard. SavvyClipboard has one scrollable window with previews of all your clips, up to 100 [buzzz ... I'm wrong about this. Turns out you can enter any number of clips to save. I just saw the presets, and you can select one of those OR you can enter your own number.], which has been plenty for my use, and which can be set lower in preferences. The window can be as narrow as 214px or as wide as you want to stretch it. I usually leave it at the smallest, because it's enough to see the image previews and the first part of the text to know what I've copied. To paste your items, you can drag them out, or you can click on an item and paste, or use the control key plus a number for the first 9 items and paste. Depending on how you copied an image, it will either drag out in it's original format or PDF. You can also right-click and save items in these formats: TIFF, JPG, PNG, BMP, RTD, RTFD, TXT. As you copy, each new item goes on top and everything else moves down, unless you have locked an item by clicking in the lower left corner of the preview (a padlock appears). Locked items stay where they are, or you can reorder your items by dragging them up and down. I like to keep my locked items at the top. When I'm done with a locked item, I unlock it and it gradually moves on down the list. You can paste your text items as plain text or rich text. You can set a default in preferences and then right-click to change it on a per-item basis. You can also right-click and edit your text items, even check spelling and grammar. Unfortunately, editing items is the one area where SavvyClipboard falls short for me. It does not strip junk/carrots/forced returns text copied from emails. On the other hand, I haven't found any other clipboard apps that do that either, not without going through several extra steps, so I use SmartWrap for that. Also, it would be nice if we could open every clipboard item, and not by right-clicking, but with a double-click [faster for me], for a default action. For example, double-clicking a copied URL would open it in a browser, email addresses would open a blank email, images would open in a predefined image editor, text items would open in a predefined text editor. If you want to do something different than the predefined action, THEN right-click or control click and make a selection. The developers have said they are actually working on adding this feature. One down, one to go. I have read some complaints about the look of SavvyClipboard. I suppose it could be more polished, maybe some black and grey, some glassy looking stuff. I don't know, I'm mostly concerned with how it works, not how it looks, and with some of the clipboard apps hovering at around $30, SavvyClipboard is a steal at $12. You can even occasionally find it at MacZot for around $8.
It’s been a long time coming, but he’s finally gone! I’ve gotta admit, though, that I was a little surprised. I’m thinking the Allison fans may have pulled together, not so much to vote for Kris Allen, but to NOT vote for Danny Gokey. Whatever, it works for me. The judges tell the contestants to let their personalities shine through, but maybe that was a mistake for Danny Gokey. I soon tired of his personality and his seeming arrogance, and also of his late wife and his large, deeply religious family who always made joyful music together (gag). I grew tired of his boring song choices, his glasses, his jewelry, his singing, his screaming ... and finally, the way he was still there when Allison was not— Allison, who could sing circles around Danny; Allison, whose CDs I would buy. I guess it just snowballed until I didn’t like a single damn thing about him. Ironic, really, because after Hollywood week, he was one of the ones I liked best. All of which is the opposite for Adam. With each passing week, I am more and more impressed by that guy— Adam, whose CDs I would also buy. He can do no wrong, in my opinion. Kris is also very good, and I like him — especially his kind of sexy bar band rock version of “Come Together”— but it’s sort of like baby blue vs. fire engine red, and fire engine red is almost always my first choice. I am making an effort to wean myself off American Idol. We don't watch the elimination show anymore. We record everything, so we are usually watching Tuesday's show on Wednesday, and when it's over, we just go to Wikipedia and see who bought it. We can also fast forward through the judges’ comments [“Dude! You can sing!” “Dude! You can REALLY sing!” “You can really sing, dude!”]. With four judges wasting singing time with inane comments, it’s tough to take. I used to think Paula was awful— well, no, Paula IS awful— but I didn’t know there was someone worse waiting in the wings. Note to Kara: Stop. Talking. Just. Stop. Talking. I’m thinking that since the judges’ gushing favorite is gone, maybe we won’t have to listen to Randy, Kara, Paula and Simon next week. Maybe they won’t even be there! Is that too much to hope for?
Note to self: Do not—I repeat: DO NOT!—buy any more applications in January, February, or March! There, now all I have to do is FOLLOW MY OWN INSTRUCTIONS. The MacHeist 3 bundle includes 2 applications that I just bought in the last month— 3, if you count EventBox that was included for free yesterday just for going to the site, and which I bought 2 days ago! Sure, one of them (The Hit List) isn’t unlocked yet, but I’m pretty sure it will be. How can you NOT buy this bundle for $39? And, if you did the missions, you get an additional $8 discount. I bought all these apps for $31. It’s like stealing— but legally! I’m still torqued about the two apps, though: The Hit List ($50) and Little-Snapper ($39), especially since I’ve been mildly displeased with LittleSnapper and have thought a couple of times that I wish I hadn’t paid $34 for it (I had a $5 discount). I think Realmac is lucky that “they got there first” and snagged a lot of buyers. More apps are coming out now that are similar to LittleSnapper, e.g., Webbla (which was part of the MacHeist 3 loot), so that will, hopefully, motivate Realmac to update more quickly, especially now, when the app is new and there are lots of little things that need to be fixed. The Hit List, I bought less than a week ago (kick, kick, kick). Don’t get me wrong, I love this app, but I wrongly assumed it wouldn’t be in the bundle because it is still in beta. It’s version 9.3.3, and when it goes to Version 1, the price is going up by $20. So, I “saved” myself $20 and bought it last week. Oy! I know I shouldn’t complain, though, because this is a great bundle. Even if all I got was Kinemac, I would be thrilled. I was tempted to buy it before when it was on MacZot and MU Promo, but at half-price, it’s still a chunk of change. For $31? $31 ... $31... I have to keep saying that to myself because it’s so unbelievable. Acorn is very cool, Picturesque has always interested me. I don’t even know what I will do if BoinxTV is unlocked. Probably annoy my family with new “projects.” Long live MacHeist ... and MacZot and MacUpdate Promo and all their bundles ... and any other bundles! I love them all!
For years now, I have had an iSight on my computer but haven’t known anyone with whom I could use iChat. About a year and a half ago, I bought my daughter an iMac, and now we can have video chats with each other on iChat and it works great. Really fun, yes, but considering she’s sitting right next to me in the same room, a little unnecessary. I then met a guy on a list I’m on and we tried to use iChat, him from Pennsylvania and me from Tennessee. It was okay, but the picture broke up a lot and looked scrambled, but we still had sound. Pretty disappointing. He said he communicated with his brothers on iChat, and they had varying levels of picture quality also. More recently, I started work for a guy in New Mexico who also has a Mac, and we tried to communicate with iChat. It worked for maybe 3 minutes, before the scrambling started, then froze completely, not even any sound. We tried several times and finally gave up. My sister-in-law in Oregon finally got a Mac, and we were pretty excited about communicating with iChat, letting Grandma see the kids and all— same old scrambling/freezing garbage. When my daughter iChats with her friends here locally, she also has the same scrambling/freezing problems. We are all working with either cable or DSL connections, but none of it works well, if at all. Why? I don’t know. What I do know is that when Google’s video chat came out, I installed it right away and told my sister-in-law to do the same. We now use it for all our video chats and have had no scrambling or freezing problems whatsoever. It works flawlessly. What is Google doing right that Apple is doing wrong?
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