By David Ponce
If you use MS Office, you’ve probably used that fancy clipboard that fits multiple things and adds all sorts of functionality (it’s late, and I can’t write. I’ll deal with my legal department in the morning). Well, now, you can add that same functionality throughout Windows with a bit of free software, The Zaphod by one Billy Chasen.
I kind of like the name, Zaphod. See, Zapod had two heads. And with this piece of code, you can have two clipboards… or more. It’s all seamlessly integrated into the keyboard. There’s no funny interface to deal with and all that jive.
Now, you should know that I haven’t yet tried the thing myself. Maybe someone out there is willing to sacrifice five minutes of his time in the name of accuracy and so forth.
Again, give Zaphod a look.
Also take a look at Ditto (http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/) which not only gives you multiple clipboards; you can also share your clipboards with other PCs on the ‘net, or local network.
This looks good, thanks for the heads-up.
Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/
The office clipboard sucks! It makes pasting text impossible. It adds it’s own formatting, and XML properties. I can’t see why anyone would want to make pasting more difficult.
Love it. I just downloaded it (last night) and I love it. I use gmail for my mail client and it doesn’t have the ability to save drafts for template emails that you send out all the time. So, I had to open thunderbird each time I needed to send a templated email out. What a pain. Now, I can store email templates in Zaphod’s multiple clipboard locations. It’s VERY easy to retrieve them, too. One downside to their method of retrieving the clipboard is that you can forget which clipboard is which if you have more than a few of them. Since I’m using it for multiple email templates, I’ll probably print out a cheat sheet and put it on my desk somewhere.
All in all, though, this is a great tool. And for $5, you can’t beat that with a stick.
Cheers!
Dan
There is nothing I hate more in Windows than the Office clipboard. I certainly don’t want to bring that frustration to other applications.
Hey David – Not sure if you drew the correlation that Zaphod maker intended. Sure he had two heads, but Zaphod Breeblebox also had 3 arms, and thus the icon. I can’t believe they’re getting away with the reference (from the Douglas Adams camp…God rest his soul) but who knows, perhaps they’re using it with permission? In any event, I don’t see what the big deal is with Office Clipboard. Is it really such a big deal? Is this really necessary?
That’s funny… I can’t remember Zaphod having three arms, and I read the book two months ago. I must really be getting stupider by the day. In any case, no, it’s not really necessary. Then again, what other things aside from maybe air, water and food are necessary? 🙂 I guess it’ll make some people’s lives just a little bit easier, for whatever that’s worth.
This disables Ctrl+X for cutting….it’s also a little slow to copy and paste.
I won’t be using it.