Shadow is a clipboard utility for OS X. Nothing special about that, right? I mean, we covered a whole slew of good ones back in January. Hold on a minute, though, because Shadow puts a new twist on the classic clipboard-enhancement app: it lets you copy and paste across your network.

That's right: Shadow uses Bonjour to let you use your clipboard across all your networked Macs. It has a lot of other useful features that any modern clipboard app needs, too. Multiple clipboards come in handy for organizing or keeping things private. A nice, bezel-style UI keeps the interface from being too obtrusive.

Although it's in public beta, Shadow is already highly usable. It records your clipboard history automatically, and you can summon it with a hotkey or the menu icon. Navigating your saved items is easy, and you can do an easy one-button paste with the spacebar. If you already have a clipboard manager, Shadow might be good enough replace it. If you don't, it's a good place to start.

When you try to copy a group of files from one folder to another, Windows will bring up a handy little window if it notices files in the target directory with the same name as files from the source directory. You can manually choose which files to overwrite or leave be one by one. Or you can click "Yes to All" to effectively overwrite every file with a duplicate name in the target directory.

But what if you want to click "No to All?" There's no button for you, but that doesn't mean Windows won't let you skip all the duplicate files. All you have to do is hold down the Shift key and click No. Now Windows will skip all files with duplicate names and copy the rest of your files to the new directory, thus saving you a lot of time, heartache, and repetitive finger motions.

[via Online Tech Tips and Tech Xpress]

When you want to copy multiple files to your clipboard in Windows you have a few choices. You can highlight a group of files with your mouse, you can hold the Shift key to select the first and last files in a series, or you can hold the Ctrl key to select multiple files in a folder even if they aren't adjacent. But what if you want to copy a group of files that aren't all hanging out in the same folder? Thats' where Piky Basket comes in.

Piky Basket is a shell extension that adds a virtual "basket" to your Windows right-click menu. When you right click on a file, you can choose to cut or copy it just like always. But you can also drop it into your Piky Basket. You can copy as many files as you like, and when you're ready to dump the contents of your basket somewhere, just select the Piky Basket option again and choose whether to copy or move your files.

While there aren't a ton of customization options, you do get to choose whether Piky Basket automatically empties your basket once you paste your files or if you want to empty your basket manually. The program also makes a kid of annoying plunking noise when you drop files in your basket, but you can turn that off in the preferences menu.

[via Freeware Genius]

Without copy and paste functionality, modern computers might as well be ancient typewriters. OK, that might be going a bit far, but would you really want to live in a world without copy and paste functionality? It's amazing how much time you can save copying and pasting serial numbers, text, URLs, pictures, and other items.

But what happens when you hit Ctrl+C and then forget to hit Ctrl+V until after you've already accidentally copied something else to your clipboard? Or what if you copied a URL into an email last week but you can't find the URL or the email today?

ControlC is a new service that automatically saves everything you copy to your clipboard to your web account. Since a record of all your copies is saved online, you can copy to your hearts content, save in the knowledge that even if you accidentally overwrite the clipboard you can still find that text snippet you need. In fact, you might start hitting Ctrl+C even when you have no intention of pasting the text anywhere, just to save a URL for later.

If you copy a picture, ControlC will not store the image online. But if you copy the URL for a web image or video, you can view the pictures or video from your ControlC account. You can also mark some text, images, or videos as public if you want to share them with friends or the the larger ControlC community.

ControlC is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. The service is currently in private beta, but you can sign up for an account using the code "beta4040." Free account holders will only be able to access 5 days worth of clippings. But you can remove that restriction by signing up for a paid account for $20 for 6 months.

[via TechCrunch]

Don't have one of those newfangled all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/time machines? Well, if you've got a printer and a scanner hooked up to you computer, you probably know that it's not that hard to use your PC as a copy machine. Just scan an image with the one and print it with the other.

The problem is that you might wind up having to use two or three separate programs to do the scanning and copying. iCopy makes the process a lot simpler.

You can either download an installer or a zip file. For some reason the installer didn't work on our test system, but the standalone .exe file in the zip version worked perfectly. The source code is also available.

The program will find your printer and scanner, and let you create copies by pressing the big button. You can also adjust your printer/scanner settings, choose the number of copies to make, and set brightness and contrast levels.

[via Digital Inspiration]

These Firefox extensions are great for the type of person who is constantly copying and pasting while in Firefox, perfect for bloggers. The first one is Auto Copy.

Auto Copy is a great extension that makes copying and pasting anything mere child's play. If you wish to copy something, all you need to do is highlight the text that you wish to copy. And that's it! What you just highlighted is now on your clipboard awaiting the paste command. The part I love the most about Auto Copy is its built-in paste shortcut key functionality that uses the mouse wheel. Those who use Linux know what I'm talking about. All you need to do is press the mouse wheel down while hovering over the area that you wish to paste to.

One thing that you might notice about Auto Copy while using it is that it will also copy the formatting that is with the text that you are trying to copy. For example, if you are copying some text from the header of a website, that has over-sized bold text that is several different colors, it will bring the size, boldness and color along with it. This may not show up when pasting into a small text field, like a Google search, but it will show up if you are posting to a rich text field, like a blog post. To get around this, all you need is the Copy Plain Text extension.

With Copy Plain Text and Auto Copy together in action, you are ready to copy anything and paste it anywhere, in Firefox that is. Auto Copy also has built-in support for Copy Plain Text. All you have to do is check the box for it in the Auto Copy options. And there is also a shortcut to Auto Copy in the Firefox status bar. If you do not want something copied to the clipboard you just need to click on the small image of a note pad (shown above with a green check mark on it). When the green check mark turn into a red X, and Auto Copy is off.

Dana "Software Jedi" Hanna's App a Day experiment--now sadly concluded--has proven to be fertile ground for Download Squad fodder. Broadcast Clipboard is a perfect example. How many times have you wanted to copy a bunch of text from one computer to another across the room or on the other side of the building? Okay, well, I have enough times for the both of us. There are lots of ways to accomplish the task--e-mailing things to yourself is pretty standard--but all of them require a few clicks, when what you really want is to copy here, paste there. Broadcast Clipboard makes that possible. All you have to do is install it on each computer in question, and when you copy something on one of them, it will be broadcast across the network and inserted into the clipboard on all of the others for quick-and-easy pasting. Very cool. As with every App a Day program, Broadcast Clipboard is an open source app for Windows.

DivX, the little video compression software company that could, is aiming to go public this week, CNET is reporting. The company has almost matched last year's annual revenue of $29.3 million in the first 6 months of 2006, and after adding copy protection to its software which helped it land in over 50 million DivX-certified devices to date, the company is now shaking hands with its former enemy: Hollywood studios. DivX is hoping to strike it big with said studios in a lucrative web distribution deal for films, though as far as we can tell, no deals are itching to be signed just yet.

ZDNet reports that film studios are going to allow the copying of downloaded movies to DVD. The spokesman for the DVD Copy Control Association, Greg Larson said "We want to give people the entertainment they want and offer it to them in the ways they want to use it." Go figure. Now if only the music business would catch on. The studios have thus far wondered why people aren't flocking to the online download services. Out on a limb here stating the obvious, but isn't it because people can't watch movies when and where they want? People have more places and devices than exist in the living room these days, in fact most people never use their living rooms. The CSS encryption technology will be updated to accommodate this shift in consumers favor, but the true test of time will reveal if this plot will work out for everyone. At least now, studios may be realizing that we want our movies and we want them burnable, mobile, and watchable on any device.

It used to be harder to justify ripping DVDs, but now, in the age of DVRs and half-terabyte hard drives copying a movie you own to your computer is both legitimate and smart. Still, some DVDs are trickier than others to back up, and that's where RipIt4Me comes in. It's a free app for Windows that combines the power of DVD Shrink, DVD Decrypter, and FixVTS to make even the stubbornest DVDs easily conquered. RipIt4Me has two modes, Wizard and 1-Click, which are pretty much what you'd guess. Wizard mode gives you a few options for a little more control over the process, and 1-Click mode just gets it done without asking you any questions. RipIt4Me is a tiny 64kb download, but you'll also have to download and install the above programs. Simple instructions can be found in the RipIt4Me Guide.

[Via Lifehacker]