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We’re glad to announce that Clips 1.2 is now available for download.

The abbreviations, shortcuts and rename panels have now been replaced with a single window: open it by double clicking a clip in the Organizer.

Along with several bug fixes and visual improvements, you will also find some new core features. Among these is the “Exceptions” feature: you can now specify a list of applications from which Clips will not try to record clipboard activity.

For more information, please see the change log or the Clips page.

Our good friends at TUAW are giving away 5 free copies of Clips. Head over to TUAW and leave a comment.

To enter, simply leave a comment in this post before Wednesday night (details below).

• Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment telling us what was the last thing you copied to the clipboard.
• The comment must be left before October 23, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One license for Clips ($34.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

We’re glad to introduce the release of Clips 1.1.1 today. This minor update is free for all Clips users and introduces the following fixes and improvements:

• Fixed a bug whereby some users could not get the full 15-day trial mode
• Improved anti-aliasing in Organizer’s tile mode
• Altered Board sidebar look and feel
• Import/support for TextExpander files and preferences
• Added the ability to copy multiple files at once (eg. from Finder)

We’re also working on a series of screencasts to explain some of Clips’ most useful features.

Keep an eye on this blog for a future announcement!

As of today, we’d like to announce that due to the outpouring of customer feedback, Clips’ introductory price of $34.99 is here to stay! We’ve thought long and hard and we truely believe that Clips was a great deal at $44.99, and now at $34.99 it is a steal.

As always, our customers are the most important thing to us. We strive to meet and go above and beyond our customer demands. If you have any any feature requests, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Let’s all celebrate by buying a license (or five).

Eleven days after the introduction of Clips 1.0, we’d like to introduce Clips 1.1. First off we’d like to thank everyone for the tremendous feedback we’ve received so far. We take your feedback very seriously and are working hard to implement your great ideas. If you have a suggestion for a feature you’d like added to Clips, please let us know. Without further ado, here are some of the new features of Clips 1.1.

Abbreviations

Assign Abbreviations to your Clips and Clips will type/paste them automatically for you when you enter the abbreviation anywhere on your Mac. Whatever formatting or content your Clips contains, it is pasted exactly the same when you type your Abbreviation. Use abbreviations for emails, signatures, code, or anything else you can think of.

Abbreviations are super handy for developers, allowing you to build up your Clips Library with snippets for blocks of code you use all the time. Insert loops, HTML code such as signatures, CSS classes, you name it and Clips can paste it.

Not a developer? No problem, Abbreviations are not just built for techie types. Use Abbreviations to replace common typos. Simply add the commonly misspelled words to your Clips Library and assign the misspelling as the Abbreviation. Presto chango, now you’re a genius!

Previews for your favorite sites

Browsing the through your Clips Library is fun, but what would make it even more fun? How about if your favorite Social Media sites would display a preview of the content it leads to?

Clips will now generate a preview and use that as the Clip for links copied from Flickr, IMDB, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, College Humor, Revision3, Funny or Die, Hulu, Metacafe, Slideshare, Viddler and Qik.

Showing the preview is only the beginning, look for exciting new features in an upcoming version of Clips. We are looking to add support for more of your favorite sites, so please let us know which ones you like!

And of course…more!

As you can probably see from the screenshot above, the Board has received a significant facelift from 1.0, and now looks more lickable than ever. We have also addressed the + and - buttons in the Organizer that so many people have been requesting, and they function exactly as you’d expect. Among these UI changes, we’ve also added or fixed the following:

• Added a Hot corner preference to the Clips Board, now you can access the Board quickly with a mouse gesture.
• Improved Networking code
• Wrapping of long plain text
• The vCard plugin now displays picture if present for a copied contact
• Enable/disable keyboard monitoring either temporarily from the menu bar or permanently via Preferences.
• Selected Clips are now zoomed when hovered for better readability.
• Added a “Clear filter when exiting Board” preference.
• Improved automatic Clip background color matching.
• New “Clear Clipboard” context menu option for quickly clearing all contents of your clipboard.
• New Grayscale menubar icon.
• Added a “Report Bug/Feature request” form under “Help” menu.
• Fixed issue with Board and changing screen resolution.

Finding a talented designer

Probably the hardest part in getting the Clips icon designed was finding a talented designer to work with. I think we probably contacted around 15 designers who we felt had the right style for us, but in the end there was only one who had the right personality and design skills we required.

Jordan Langille of OneToad Design is one of the more popular designers for Mac and iPhone software developers. He came highly recommended by our fellow developers on the #macsb IRC channel.

Getting the preliminary sketches

When we approached Jordan, we really didn’t know what we wanted. We knew we wanted a nice icon that fit with the rest of Mac OS X and would convey what our application was trying to accomplish. We basically gave him free creative reign and shortly after our initial discussions he had produced the following sketch for our approval:

What goes into an icon?

The sketch above is a good representation of Clips, at least we think so. There is the obvious clipboard metaphor, but taken further with all different types of media being stored in “cubbies” (ala Spaces) of their own. We left it up to Jordan to decide what content best be displayed in their own cubbies, and he did a pretty good job at conveying Clips’ everyday usage amongst various workflows.

Microsoft’s Zune and Clips’ icon: 2 things that don’t look sexy in brown.

The first revision of the Clips icon had a really standard approach to the clipboard, and Jordan used a nice brown color. The icon looked very nice, but really didn’t ooze pretty to us. Being conceited, we decided we would throw out the “norm” and go with a nice stainless steel clipboard. Practical? Not really, but it sure is sexy! Below is a picture of the first draft done by Jordan.

It’s in the details!

We went through several revisions with fairly minor tweaks to shadows, reflections, textures, etc. until we came to what you know as the Clips icon today. Jordan was extremely patient and very helpful in getting the icon exactly the way we wanted it.

The little things other people don’t notice are the things that make Mac users special. If you look closely in the clip, you’ll see the reflection of some office lights. It’s a minor detail, but it’s there for those looking. Here is the final Clips icon.

Hi everybody!

We’re very happy to announce the release of our brand new app, Clips - your clipboard reinvented. Clips is the ultimate OS X clipboard and snippet manager built for Mac OS X Leopard. A 15 day free trial is available and we encourage you to check it out.

With the release of Clips we have also launched a brand new website. We hope you’ll like it.

If Clips is of interest to you, you may want to check our friend Macenstein’s website before Sunday night at midnight PST - comment on their Clips announcement and you’ll be entered in a contest to win one of the 5 free 1.x licenses.

New Scripts

1. netinfo - Output network usage for all interfaces to the current channel. Created by Nicholas Penree per request on forum.
2. rot13 - Output given text with rot13 cypher to the current channel. Created by Tobias Tom.
3. flip - Output text flipped upside down to the current channel. Created by Tobia Tom.
4. xbl - Output XBOX Live statistics for a given gamer tag to the current channel. Created by chapel per forum post.

Updated Scripts

1. slap - Updated the original slap script to add support for multiple items and random slaps. Created by Okeanos and chapel, based on original work by Nicholas Penree per forum post.

Reminder: You can download all the new scripts and update your existing ones with one simple command: /getscript -all from inside Linkinus itself.

Getscript.. what is that?

Getscript is a feature included in Linkinus 1.2 and up that allows you to install or update scripts by simply requesting it via a /getscript scriptname from inside Linkinus. This makes it extremely easy to install new scripts created by the great Linkinus community, and also make sure your scripts are always up to date with the latest features.Even though this feature is not new to 1.3, we felt as though it was not being used at much as it could be. We wanted to write this post to give you a little primer in how this will make your life a little easier. No more searching for plugins or scripts via google or forums, simply execute a command while your in Linkinus and instantly download and install all your favorite plugins

Sounds good, but are there really more scripts available?

New scripts are being created almost everyday by the ever-growing Linkinus community. We will be posting new editions or updates to our Getscript repository on our blog, so make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed to stay notified of any changes.

Do I have to get them one-by-one? I’m a busy person!

Getscript does allow you to fetch an individual script if you would like by simply using the /getscript scriptname command (e.g. /getscript itunes). If you prefer to grab them all you can use /getscript -all and it will download/update all available scripts and reload the new versions automatically.

How do I get my script available inside the Getscript command?

If you would like your script to be easily installed, simply email us using our contact form and specify “Addon Submission” as the subject or drop by our IRC chatroom and let us know!

What’s next?

Getscript is currently being expanded to cover more than just scripts. Look for future versions which will include support for plugins and styles as well!

Hey guys. With the release of 1.3 we want to make sure everyone knows about it. Please show your support by letting others know you use Linkinus by using iusethis. Thanks guys!