Review: ClipMate - Using the clipboard as a capture tool
One of the essential Getting Things Done concepts is the capture tools we use to get thoughts out of our head and into our trusted system. I use a variety of tools, depending on my context:
- NoteTaker Wallet: a small leather wallet with a notepad and collapsible Rotring pen available from David Allen's website. Perfect for scribbling down a quick thought, I tear off the notes I've collected whenever I get back to my desk and drop them in my Inbox for processing.
- Pocket Informant on my PocketPC: Currently, I'm using a Toshiba PocketPC with the Pocket Informant application. I can jot a note and attach a context to it quite quickly. It syncs back to my Outlook-based environment on my Tablet PC when I next drop it into the cradle on my desk.
- Outlook: When I'm at my desk, working on my full-sized keyboard and monitor, I enter thought directly into Outlook.
- GoBinder: When I'm away from my desk and working in Tablet mode, I write my ideas and commitments in GoBinder in digital ink and then transfer them to Outlook.
As you can see, I never find myself in a situation where I have to rely on memory to capture and store an idea or action. This is the essence of the Collection phase of GTD.
It's occurred to me recently that, with all of the tools I use and have written about, I have never really addressed the Windows clipboard as a capture tool. There's a good reason why - the clipboard is a very ephemeral "bucket" that can only hold one item at a time. Microsoft Office has a clipboard feature that can hold multiple items but, of course, it's only helpful if you're working in an Office application and it's not an especially intuitive manager even when in that environment.
So, in my best gadget freak way, I set out to look for ways to leverage the clipboard. I've used applications like Onfolio, Black Hole Organizer, OneNote, and even Outlook and GoBinder to try to quickly capture and store information as I copy it from an e-mail, document, or web page. But this imposes two penalties I'm not willing to endure: having that application always running (with the attendant overhead) and a context switch from what I'm currently doing.
I hate switching contexts when I'm on a roll. I much prefer to capture and continue as transparently as possible. So anytime I have to switch from my current application to another just to store an item, I pay an unacceptable price in terms of continuity and productivity. Ideally, I just want to capture the item of interest and continue merrily along my way.
Now, after all of my years of dabbling with and writing about software tools, why I never before looked into the clipboard manager category of software is a mystery. It would have seemed to be a natural space to investigate. But up until recently, it was a thing I just had not gotten around to doing. I have now rectified this oversight and have spent the past couple of weeks testing various products that allow you to capture as much as you want using standard copy and paste commands without the one-at-a-time restriction posed by the standard Windows clipboard. It's a pretty crowded category with a lot of tools that do a very good job. Most are quite inexpensive, as you would expect from a utility software category like this.
The clipboard tool I've decided to add to my tool kit is ClipMate from Thornsoft Development. ClipMate has been around for a long time, dating back to 1991. The current version, ClipMate 6, is a refined and very powerful tool that allows you to use the clipboard as an effective capture tool for all of your computing tasks. Whether you're capturing a snippet of text from an e-mail message or Word document, a portion of a web page, a graphic image, or even a portion of the screen, ClipMate has the tool you need.
See screenshots in the ClipMate gallery (link is on the left sidebar of this page).
As you might expect in a tool that has been aging like a fine wine, there's a richness to this application that I did not experience in the other tools I examined. Consider this list of features:
- Unlimited categories into which you can save and organize your clips
- A robust editor that can be undocked from the main program window featuring spell checking, text format correction tools, plain text and HTML formatting, and syntax highlighting when working with HTML, PHP, XML, and other code text.
- A built-in web browser and the ability to revisit the source of any web clip
- Encryption on a per clip basis (perfect for passwords, account number, and other private information)
- The ability to sequentially paste items from a list into form fields
- The ability to concatenate successive copy operations into a single clipboard item
This is just a partial list of the many features ClipMate offers. I've been using the tool extensively for more than a week and I feel like I've just begun to appreciate all it can do. I have over a dozen categories set up and I can retrieve any clip in a matter of seconds thanks to ClipMate's SQL database structure and excellent search tools.
ClipMate offers two different user interfaces, depending on the level of power you need at any given time. ClipMate Classic presents a small window that can be expanded to present a pick list of recent clips in the active category and a preview area to see the actual contents of the selected clip. A simple keystroke (CTRL+E) toggles you between this Classic mode and the ClipMate Explorer interface. ClipMate Explorer is a full-blown application in which you can manage your clip, and even create entirely new entries,. This interface is so powerful, I actually used it to write this review. And, unlike many text editing tools I've used over the years, it's obvious that developers at Thornsoft know what writers need. For example, the bottom status bar shows you a real-time byte, character, and word count. I can't even do a word count in OneNote (a glaring omission to any writing tool IMO). There's also a standard, Office-style spell checker, drag and drop editing, and the format cleaning tools I mentioned earlier.
Keyboard shortcuts abound. I can quickly switch between categories, toggle between Classic and Explorer modes, search through my clips database, and select previous and next items. The System Tray icon's context menu (right click) provides quick access to a number of the most useful features.
The bottom line: ClipMate allows me to use the clipboard as a ubiquitous capture tool whenever I'm at the computer. In true Getting Things Done fashion, it provides me with another way to quickly capture any thought that has impact or appeal and get it into a trusted system I can process, organize, and act on.
ClipMate can be evaluated for 30 days. A single license is $29.95.