Cloud clipboard
Paste all over the place
The clipboard is ubiquitous for copying and
pasting content between apps on one device, but of course it only remembers one
thing at a time. CloudClipboard remembers everything you copy, and lets you
paste it to any Mac or iOS device through iCloud syncing.
Everything
you copy ends up in CloudClipboard.
To send something from your default
clipboard into the cloud, just click the CloudClipboard icon or window. There’s
also an option to auto-paste, in the background, everything you copy into
CloudClipboard. Once in CloudClipboard, your information is divided into
categories: Text, Webclips, Links, and Photos. You can title items, edit text
and URL entries, preview photos, and launch the URLs of all your Webclips. The
only things missing are a search field and a search field and the ability to
reorder items.
You can use CloudClipboard on a single Mac,
but it truly shines when you use iCloud syncing. Copy something on one Mac, and
it’s available from other Macs and iOS devices (using the $4.99 universal
iPhone/iPad app) within seconds. This is even faster than using Dropbox, since
you don’t need to create or save a file before the sync happens. All your
copied info is just there.
The bottom line
If you work between multiple Macs and iOS
devices, you can’t beat the sheer convenience of CloudClipboard to sync
information between your machines.
·
Product: CloudClipboard 1.1
·
Company: Light Room
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Contact: www.lightroomapps.com
·
Requirements: OS X 10.8 or later
·
Positives: Stores anything you can copy.
Organizes by category. Some types are editable. Seamless iCloud integration and
syncing
·
Negatives: no search filed or reordering. iCloud
requires at least OS X 10.7, and the App Store requires 10.8.
·
Rated (Excellent): 4.5/5
Newsbar RSS reader
Good-bye, Google reader
NewsBar shows just how slick an RSS app can
be; it displays articles beautifully and it’s easy to customize the look, behavior,
and alerts. Folders, under Preferences > RSS Feeds, let you bundle related
feeds together, and NewsBar can even pull in your Google Reader feeds (before
that service disappears in July) and merge them with your local feeds, so
they’ll keep working seamlessly when Google Reader goes dark.
Sleek,
simple, and nicely translucent.
Not everything was perfect, though: our
folders weren’t copied from Google Reader, and dragging each feed to a folder
one at a time took a while. You can import and export OPML files (say, to
transfer your feeds in from another reader), but it’s a little hidden, in
Preferences > RSS Feeds, behind a gear button.
NewsBar can live on the left or right of
your screen, or a floating window, and when you click an article it opens in a
floating pane, with a button to view the original page in your default browser.
It can also alert you to new articles with specified keywords, highlighting
them in a color and playing a sound. You can even get alerts from OS X’s
Notification Center.
The bottom line
Whether you want your RSS feeds front and
center, or faded into the background of your Desktop, NewsBar is a flexible,
elegant choice
·
Product: NewsBar RSS Reader 3.1.2
·
Company: Merlin Developments
·
Contact: www.newsbar-app.com
·
Price: $4.99
·
Requirements: 64-bit processor, OS X 10.6.6 or
later
·
Positives: Slick, minimal interface. Great
performance. Customizable categories and RSS feeds. Picks up where Google
Reader left off.
·
Negatives: Interface can feel a bit too cut
down/minimalistic at times.
·
Rated (Great): 4/5
Write 2
The sweet spot between text edit and
word
If you need a word processor that’s more
capable than TextEdit, but don’t want the huge footprint (or expense) of Word,
then Write 2 may ably fill that need. It’s a streamlined but capable option
that includes helpful features like columns and header/footer support, along
with a live word count, plus you can save to and edit Word and Rich Text file
formats. Columns and tables made here don’t transfer over to Word docs, though,
so it doesn’t play quite as nicely as hoped.
You
can create tables with ease, but saving to a Word doc drops the formatting.
The bottom line
Affordable, fast, and easy to use, Write 2
is a worthwhile lightweight word processing option.
Columns,
live word count, and header and footer support are all helpful features in
Write 2.
·
Product: Write 2.0.7
·
Company: MOApp Software
·
Contact: www.writetheapp.com
·
Price: $6.99
·
Requirements: 64-bit processor, OS X 10.7.4 or
later
·
Positives: More robust feature set than
TextEdit. Works with Word and RTF file formats. Affordable
·
Negatives: Columns and tables don’t transfer to
Word docs. Occasional crashes.
·
Rated (Good): 3.5/5
Typeit4me
Type less, but say more
TypeIt4Me comes with a few sample
clippings, and as our library grew, we really appreciated all the sorting
options. You can order your list by most used, last used, alphabet, last added,
and so on, and sync your clipping sets over iCloud to other Macs and iOS
devices with TypeIt4Me Touch ($4.99, universal). If you want to get old-school,
a printable list of your clippings and abbreviations is one click away. And
it’s easy to exclude some apps or restrict certain clipping sets to certain
apps. You can even set up trigger keys that you have to press before an
abbreviation, to avoid typing them inadvertently. Your clippings don’t have to
be plain text, either. They can be rich text, images, or have special
characters like tabs and returns. You can insert the date and time, nest
clippings inside each other and even run AppleScripts.
One
of the more useful examples: a short blog post’s worth of lorem ipsum
placeholder text.
The bottom line
Category-leading TextExpander ($34.99 Mac,
$4.99 iOS) goes further, letting you set up form-letter-like snippets and share
your snippets on the web. But if you can forgo those, TypeIt4Me is just as
great at saving you time.
·
Product: TypeIt4Me 5.3.2
·
Company: Ettore Software
·
Contact: www.ettoresoftware.com
·
Price: $19.99
·
Requirements: 64-bit processor, OS X 10.7 or
later
·
Positives: Nearly as robust as TextExpander but
for less. On sale for $4.99 at press time. Syncs to a universal $4.99 app for
iPad/iPhone
·
Negatives: Missing some of TextExpander’s more
advanced features. No sharing or importing of clipping sets.
·
Rated (Great): 4/5
