My age is growing faster than I wished it would and with that comes the challenge of memory overload. Seems the mind's drive does not have infinite storage capacity and old memories are cleared to make room for new. (Maybe they are archived in some bundled files that are just harder to unpack.) At any rate both the tools I am going to discuss help this mind function more efficiently.
First, one clipboard is never enough! That is what Mac OS gives you. I can't tell you how many times I have copied some text to the clipboard, deleting it from the source with the intention of pasting it somewhere else--only to be foiled by the speed at I use copy/paste to change something else. Gone! Chronos has made my life less frustrating. It is one of the tools that I happily pay for upgrades as I want it to be as powerful as possible (I have no ties other than paying customer for either of these products).
iclipboard "shelf" hides at the side of my computer with just a small gray tap showing. But it is hard at work recording the last 50 things that I copied to my clipboard. When I am working in a environment like this one and afraid of losing text, I make a copy and I know I have it. Then for bits I really want to save, I can lock them on the clipboard. I do this for messages I send over and over. So, for example, if I have letter I send to schedule interviews locked in the clipboard. I address a new message and then select the tab to open Iclipboard and double click the locked message and there it is ready to modify and send. Or if there is some text I want to put at the bottom of webpages (like the creative common license) I have it in the clipboard and with a click it is anywhere I want it. You can clip anything-- text, links, photos, videos or anything you see on your computer. Here are is a video from chronos that explains it better than I will here. It laso gets rid of text formatting by holding down the shift key when you copy it (handy for moving text to wikis).
Taking Note....
Remembering passwords for all of the many programs and making them both different and difficult stretches the limit of my mind. The second tool I want to share is Soho Notes again by Chronos. This tool is a database and it stores notes of all kinds. But the notes that I have the most need for are encrypted password notes. I try to remember to store the passwords each time I create them for a site. I can then quickly search on the site name to find them. Also I can make anything I copy move from the clipboard to a note. So when I buy something or get a registration number, I can copy the relevant information on screen, then I select the iclipboard and move the copied text to a note and then file it with other similar notes.
You can open a daily note for things you planned to do, but never got to... or other things you need to jot down. Also I use it as a fast notepad when I need to compose messages to a threaded discussion online (I teach online). In programs like Blackboard, moddle or Sakai, when you push the reply option, you often only see the last message. By opening a note, I can scan all of the messages in the discussion and compose my message and then past it into a reply box.
I also use encrypted notes to save information about my parents heath issues, their doctors names and phone numbers, so I will be ready if they should need immediate help. I don't know how good the encryption is, but at least it is better than storing tis information in a open files. I feel that I have taken at least some level of care in protecting information. I know lots of people who have doc files called passwords sitting on their computers.
Both these programs are reasonable priced ($30 and $40) and upgrades are generally a bit cheaper. Also I originally got iclipboard for free for buying Soho Notes-- so watch for offers. I see they have an iphone version but the reviews are mixed so I am going to wait a bit till they figure out how to make it work a bit more smoothly. I will let you know when I risk the $5 AND the time it takes to set it up.


