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.

Here it is, January 1, and I am faced with putting my Christmas CDs away for another year, I am thinking of keeping a few out that are just so good that I will actually miss them and want to play them in July, or maybe even March.

I am always on the look-out for new, different, interesting Christmas music, which is hard to do when I already have maybe 100 Christmas CDs and there are probably less than 100 standard Christmas songs. I prefer the usual songs with a lot of variations, but nothing too “out there.” Having said that, though, SheDaisy has a Christmas album called Brand New Year that is a little out there, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s tough to beat Santa’s Got a Brand New Bag (listen here) for an all-out boogying Christmas song.

This year, my newest favorite Christmas CD is Deana Carter’s Father Christmas. It’s not a new CD, actually released in 2001, but I just discovered it and it has received a LOT of playtime in my iTunes. I first heard a couple of the songs through Pandora and I tried to download the album from iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 music, but I could only get it on an actual CD.

The entire album is Deana Carter singing by herself, accompanied only by her dad, Earl Carter, a Nashville session guitarist who has worked with a lot of big names. It’s just beautiful, so understated and also a little quirky at times. There is one part in Winter Wonderland where Earl changes the beat on her and Deana says, “Da-ad!” in that way that kids when they are being teased, and she finished the song without missing a beat. And, man, do I wish there was someone at my house who could play guitar like Earl Carter, even HALF as good! His opening of Silent Night makes me almost want to cry.

I took the CD to a local coffee house the other night where we were meeting friends for some holiday cheer. They played the CD for us over their music system, and it sounded fabulous! A lot of people asked about the artist and title of the CD. I can’t believe it’s taken me seven years to come across it.

While I’m thinking of it, The Gypsy Hombres have an excellent Christmas CD called Django Bells. Especially good versions of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.