iClip - Mini Review

MacZot is having a ReviewZot, where every review of the featured app will decrease the price of the app until it is FREE as in beer. Yes, this means free advertizing for the developers, but it is a fun way to get a free copy of an app. 

I got iClip orginally through MacZot and another copy through the MacHeist bundle. iClip (by Inventive) sits in your menu bar and stores multiple copies of your clipboard. It's keeps a memory of those things you copy or paste, and lets you call up those clippings later on when you need it. The clippings can be for graphics or text, and you can save customized clipping sets that you will use frequently. For example, when grading pdf papers from students, I paste the grade breakdown as a template via the comments function in Preview. iClip lets me keep a set of paper grade templates I can call on easily.

You can call up iClip by either mousing to the menubar icon an clicking, or mousing to the hot area of the screen you assign. The iClip app has a 'pop-up' window with the clippings. The app looks very slick and cool, with these lens-looking clip portals. You can customize these portals' size and shape (round or square). The previous version of iClip used rectangular panels instead, and while visually inferior to the current version, it seemed to be a better use of space, particularly on small screens. The developer should consider an option to return to the simple pop up window interface for those who might prefer lower resource usage.

Although I don't activate the app all the time, when I do use it - it has been very fast and stable in nearly all cases. The only time I had any problems was trying it on an Intel Mini with Parallels Desktop, trying to copy and paste from the Windows virtual machine. My recollection is that iClip quit or crashed - but my memory is a bit hazy. Never-the-less, that particular situation is not very common for me, so it's not a big deal.

The only other complaint I have is that the full price ($29) is a bit steep for iClip, so the only way I've obtained it was at a discount. This is a very slick app, but pricing it at $10 or $15 might be a better marketing ploy. 

I've not compared this app with any other similar utilities, so I can't really contrast iClip with them. However, if you can get a copy of iClip - I recommend it highly.

MacZot GiftZot: A Good Deal

 MacZot ran a "GiftZot" last week with several mystery apps for $20. I got it as my Birthday Zot last, and bought another one for a friend. The value of the package increased over the days it was offerred, as a few apps were added. Although licenses were a bit slow in coming, I have to say that after seeing the app list this was a pretty good deal if even two of the apps are useful.

Apps included are two games (Diner Dash 2 and Faeries), MenuCalendarClock, Tubular, PhotoStickies, LOOPS WaterPack, xSlimmer, and $10 credit on iStockPhoto. Games are nice, but I have little time for them. MenuCalendarClock looks useful - puts your iCal in the menubar. Very handy on my PB I think. Tubular is quite appealing - allows us to browse, search, and play YouTube vids. It's a 'presell' - so not yet there. I wish it would allow me to save vids to disk - that makes it easier for me to play vids in to students in lecture when there isn't an available internet connection. PhotoStickies let's you leave photos (and webcams) on your desktop. Great for displaying my baby photos (until everyone is sick of them). The Loops Water Pack is a series of high res screen savers with a water theme. These might be interesting if I get tired of my current screensaver called LotsaWater. The best app of the bunch seems to be xSlimmer that removes the FAT from Universal apps. I've had my eye on this for a while, and hope to save lotsa space PowerPC Macs. :-)

I also think that MacZot is offering better apps recently. FreezeFrame, Spyder, Cocktail (woohoo!), and a Devon app, Desktop Transporter, were all offered in the last week. If you balked at paying $15 for Cocktail - you could have had it for $7.45. This is an indispensible utility for many Mac Diehards.

Let's hope they pull in some equally cool deals in the future.