Few things are as frustrating as having to repeat yourself over, and over, and over - like typing the same thing all the time. It's a pain in the butt. Fortunately, KA Type In is the hemorrhoid relief you've been looking for!

Here's what we like about it: 1) it's under 1MB to download 2) it has a portable mode 3) it's free 4) it's easy to use...and last, but certainly not least, 5) it's a massive time-and-effort saver.

Install it, move your mouse to the side of your screen, and the Type In windows slides in to view. Single click on one of your snippets and it's sent to the active application. But wait, it gets better! You can code fill-in fields and be prompted for values to input on-the-fly. This is an awesome way to make all your code snippets portable - take Type In with you on your flash drive and use them in any editor, even a browser-based HTML editor like FCK.

And get this: it does auto-completion with a single keystroke. Set up a snip, type the first few letters, and hit ctrl+; and Type In does the rest. Take that, inefficiency!

It's a 6MB process that uses almost no CPU, and it has so many possible applications that anyone can benefit from using it. Windows only, which makes us a little sad - this app is so sweet, everyone should be able to use it!

As more and more users start seeing the new version of Gmail, they're finding that their favorite Firefox add-ons and Greasemonkey extensions may no longer be working. One of the most popular Greasemonkey extensions for Gmail has to be Macros, created by Google employee Mihai Parparita. Luckily, a new version has now been released.

Those of you that are aware of the Macros script for Gmail have probably already all left to go grab the latest version. The rest of you still reading are probably wondering what all the hubbub is about, so here's a quick rundown of what Macros is, and why you need it.

Macros is a Greasemonkey script that adds a bunch of very useful keyboard shortcuts to Google's already very keyboard-centric Gmail control mechanism, like the ability to jump directly to a label by typing "L" then the label's name. While that's some pretty sweet functionality, Macros is worth installing for one specific shortcut: the D (for dismiss) key.

If you check the box for a few unread emails in your inbox that you know you don't need to read, you can press the D key to dismiss those messages. This will automatically mark them all as read and archive them in one fell swoop. It's amazing how fast you can process your inbox by first making a pass through and dismissing anything that is not relevant or necessary. This is a favorite trick for when you're returning from vacation or even on a Monday morning with a weekend's worth of messages piled up.

If you're not interested in installing Greasemonkey to get this functionality, consider just grabbing Lifehacker's Better Gmail Firefox add-on, which has Macros built right in, as well as a number of other useful features.

Gmail could very well be one of the most hackable web services of all time. One only needs to check our Gmail tag to see what tools are available for enhancing one's experience, and now we have a slick new cross-platform Firefox add-on to link to from our friends at Lifehacker: Better Gmail. As its name suggests, Better Gmail rounds up a number of popular Greasemonkey scripts and other extras into a handy management UI, complete with links to homepages if you need to find out more about any of the included extras. As you can see, this add-on packs a wallop, including many of our old (and new) favorites such as the Macros script (for many more keyboard shortcuts Gmail should really have in the first place), an Unlabelled label hack and a Filter Assistant which brings that handy email client functionality of building filters from a currently selected message. Of course, one could run out and find all these scripts on their own, but Better Gmail takes the clicking out of that process and wraps all this great stuff into one handy extension, complete with the ability to disable it all in one fell swoop in case you need to get back to Gmail's basics.

Better Gmail is of course provided for free here.

Windows Live has added an interesting feature called Search Macros that let you "create your own search engine." It's a bit like what Rollyo does: It lets you save a specific set of sites that you want to search among. To create you macro you use operators (that will look familiar to power users) like "site:" to indicate a site to include and "prefer:" to indicate keywords and sites that you want nudged higher in the search results. In this way you can "create" a search engine that's tailored specifically toward a particular subject matter. If you're still confused, you should check out Zachary Gutt's overview at the MSN Search Blog (see if you can spot the hidden jab at Google), where he explains the operators and shows how to create a macro.