Hawk Wings » helpful apps

Clever TextExpander clipboard snippet trick

Tim Gaden — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:20:32 +0000

The makers of TextExpander, a very clever time- and finger-saving snippet utility, have posted a nice tip on the company’s blog.

It explains how to make a “smart snippet” using TextExpander’s %clipboard variable, which is replaced by whatever is currently on the clipboard when the snippet is typed.

The original author of the tip uses it to create Amazon affiliate links for his blog on the fly, but obviously it has wider uses too.

For example, imagine you run a blog that attracts a lot of emails asking how to do this, that or the other thing.

You can quickly run up a snippet like this:

Then, when the emails start to arrive, all you need to do is navigate to the link, copy it to the clipboard and then type the snippet into the reply:

Suddenly more of your life is your own. Clever.

If I sat around here long enough I’m sure I could think of a dozen other applications for this tip, but you might have more fun thinking them up for yourself.

TextExpander costs USD 29.95 and is available from the developer’s web site .textexpander, textpander, productivity, snippets, shortcuts, tips, helpful apps, clipboard, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts:

TextExpander: Update, Tips and Tricks

Tim Gaden — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:45:57 +0000

TextExpander, the utility formerly known as Textpander, has been updated.

The new version (1.4.1) fixes problems with abbreviations involving the Option key, describes named delimiters (space, tab, return, esc) properly in languages other than English and includes several other minor bugfixes.

Merlin Mann at 43 Folders uses this update as an opportunity to share some tips on the ways in which he uses the app to save time and fingers.

Also, TextExpander’s developers have posted a great suggestion from Timothy of Ohio on grouping shortcuts into contexts with distinct initial characters. Clever.

TextExpander costs USD 29.95 and is available from the developer’s web site .textexpander, textpander, productivity, snippets, shortcuts, tips, helpful appsSimilar Posts:

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner 4.7.1

Tim Gaden — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:26:04 +0000

Andreas Amann has updated his very useful Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, a utility that simplifies the process of switching from Eudora or Thunderbird to Mail.app.

In particular, the app is much smarter about importing Eudora nicknames and much better at parsing them. It no longer identifies some nicknames as mailing lists. The whole importing process is much faster.

A number of smaller tweaks make EMC more stable, especially during the initial scan of files to be imported.

There has never been a better time to switch from Eudora.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Andrea’s web site.mail.app, apple mail. eudora, thunderbird, switching, importing, nicknames, plugins, helpful appsSimilar Posts:

Quickly email yourself with “Note to Self”

Tim Gaden — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:28:28 +0000

Will Henderson has written a “micro-app” that lets you quickly email a note, to-do or reminder to yourself in Mail.app.

He got frustrated by iCal’s to-dos, which didn’t quite do what he wanted, as he explains:

For a while now, I’ve been sending myself todos via iCal, but that’s not good enough – it requires a net connection and it doesn’t cover many usage scenarios, i.e.
â€¢ I want a task that doesn’t have a particular due date
â€¢ I want a task that can be filed or tagged (using Mailtags , of course)
â€¢ I want searchable notes attached to my task

Despite a small bug (notes are sometimes sent to the Drafts folder not the Inbox), the app does a good job.

You can collect the notes or to-dos in a smart mailbox easily. A condition that matches “Yourself” as a recipient catches them all.

This may appeal to people who are interested in using Mail.app as a personal information manager or as a “Yojimbo substitute” as well as those who like Will want more flexible and taggable to-dos.

Note to Self is donation-ware and is available from Will’s web site .productivity, information manager, mail.app, apple mail, notes, to-dos, iCal, helpful appsSimilar Posts:

Snail Mail 1.5: Slick Address Book Envelopes

Tim Gaden — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:37:43 +0000

Snail Mail is a stand-alone app that addresses and prints very nice envelopes based on the information in your Address Book (See an earlier Hawk Wings review).

It can print single envelopes or an envelope for every member of an Address Book Group. You also select multiple cards for printing on the fly.

An updated version released today (1.5) is a universal binary.

It also supports the swapping of first and last names, easier removal of a return address and a preference to omit the delivery country if it is the same as the return address country.

Snail Mail is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site .address book, envelopes, helpful apps, productivitySimilar Posts:

Screenshot Plus: Smarter, faster screenshots

Tim Gaden — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:35:11 +0000

If you spend a lot of time taking screenshots (as I do), you will like Screenshot Plus, an image capture widget with a very neat trick up its sleeve.

Like other screenshot widgets (Capture for example) it can take fullscreen grabs, selections or particular windows. Unlike Capture, it can also do timed screenshots and grab individual widgets. These options are presented nicely on the front of the widget:

On the rear, the widget offers something truly time-saving. By default it displays the screenshot as a preview after capture, but you can set it (as above) to import the screenshot directly into your image editor of choice.

In my case that’s Photoshop. The time (and finger-wear) I will save by not clicking and dragging from Desktop to app is immense. It will even launch the editor for you if it’s not already open.

Of course, I can still make a cup of coffee while Photoshop loads, but that’s not the widget’s fault.

A drop-down menu allows you to specify your destination of choice—another image editor or iPhoto or whatever.

Images can be captured as png, tiff, jpg, jp2, pdf, gif, bmp, or pict files.

A new version released a few days ago adds 10.4.7 compatibility and better French language support.

Screenshot Plus is freeware and available from the developer’s web site . screenshot, capture, images, productivity, widget, time-saving, helpful apps, not apple mailSimilar Posts:

Export Address Book 1.1: New formats, more options

Tim Gaden — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:20:18 +0000

Export Address Book is an app which (unsurprisingly) exports all the data in your Address Book into an independent data file that you can archive, use with a Microsoft Word Merge or FileMaker database or import into your favourite web-based email service.

It is a universal binary and comes with an Automator action to automate repeated exports.

The app overs considerable control over the export process, allowing you to select which records to export, which fields from those records, how to order them and whether to give the exported data customised labels:

A new version (1.1) released today includes two new formats, CSV and HTML tables, for the exported data and more options for handling line breaks, as you can see from the new options pane:

Export Address Book is shareware (10 Euros = USD 12.50) and is available from the developer’s web site.address book, exporting, contacts, csv, tsv, html, helpful appsSimilar Posts:

Two apps for a smarter Spotlight

Tim Gaden — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:00:03 +0000

Goodness knows Spotlight is powerful enough.

It’s almost too powerful for its own good. For example, it loves to get going as soon as you type in the first few letters of your search, which can be frustrating. And it loves to find everything it can, smothering you in an avalanche of hits from your hard drive.

Productivity takes a hit from the waiting and from the extra sifting of results.

Two apps can help. HoudahSpot helps you to control Spotlight’s power for more focussed searches and Searchlight extends Spotlight’s reach to files on a network’s server.

HoudahSpot: Sharper focus for Spotlight’s muscle

HoudahSpot is a “front-end” for Spotlight. It offers an easy way to create complicated Boolean searches in Spotlight and to restrict results easily to a particular class of object (image, document, PDF, etc).

It comes tooled up with pre-defined templates for “long lost” documents and recent documents, and with hotkeys for saved searches.

The interface consists of a series of familiar fields for constructing your search:

Say, for example, I wanted to find a paper I began two years ago, which seemed like a good idea at the time but ran out of steam unfinished. I know that it was about Tertullian, but I don’t want to wade through the 450+ hits Spotlight will produce by itself.

I remember that it mentions Tertullian and Augustine and that it was a Word Document.

A HoudahSpot search quickly finds the most likely matches and even gives me a preview of the selected one so that I can double-check that it’s right:

HoudahSpot is shareware (USD 14.95) is available from the developer’s web site .

Searchlight: Spotlight searching for servers

Searchlight brings Apple’s Spotlight to the network.

Searchlight brings Spotlight searching to a Mac OS X server, allowing all the clients on the network to search it for files. The recently released version 1.1 also supports SMB, so that Spotlight can also search mounted Windows volumes.

It provides a web interface to its searches, built with Ruby on Rails and accessible to Mac, Windows and Linux users.

Document subscription via RSS keeps users informed when documents change or new ones are created.

Searchlight is shareware (USD 29.90) and is available from the developer’s web site .spotlight, productivity, searches, tips, helpful apps, server, network, not apple mailSimilar Posts:

PopCopy 2.0: Faster, more features

Tim Gaden — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 23:23:29 +0000

The clipboard expender, PopCopy, has been completely rewritten and released as version 2.0.

It is now fully compatible with Microsoft Office’s apps. The app’s rewritten code means that saves and loads more quickly and efficiently.

The Menubar drop-down menu now allows for the deletion of recent clips and offers previews of clipped images.

When activited, the app’s interface now shows three items:

The Preferences screen allows you to set the interface’s hotkey, turn the menubar display on or off and toggle automatic pasting:

PopCopy now also has an industrial-strength nag screen.

Personally, I prefer Jumpcut for greater simplicity, but PopCopy offers support for images which will appeal to some.

PopCopy is shareware (USD 14) and is available from the developer’s web site .popcopy, jumpcut, clipboard extender, helpful apps, productivity, clips Similar Posts:

Plugin List: Updates, improvements

Tim Gaden — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 11:19:33 +0000

Two new items have been added to the Hawk Wings’ Plugin and Addon List.

Letterbox, which brings the three-paned Outlook or Entourage look to Mail.app’s interface, finds a place in the Added Functionality section.

iSay, an app that records spoken messages which are then packaged up as an attachment to a Mail message, has also been included in the Added Functionality section.

Today Tom Skawski II sent me a list of over 30 typos and stupid mistakes in the text of the Plugin and Addon List. Fixing them was a humbling and salutary experience, which should make the list (now 125+ entries) easier on the eye for readers. Thanks, Tom!plugins, addons, mail.app, apple mail, helpful apps, hacks, voice recording, voicemailSimilar Posts: