The Clips Panel

I think my most used feature of Clips is the Panel. Pictured on the right, you’ll see that the board gives you a nice little palette of all your clips. This is the perfect productivity tool for storing bits of your digital life. Using your clips anywhere on your system is easy, just position your cursor where you want your clip, bring up the panel and then simply choose the clip by clicking on it.

Store your email signatures, text templates, or your stash of links to share in your Clips Panel and get the job done faster. I think this is useful for everyone.

Developers: store and recall snippets of code, insert color codes or graphics, and more

Designers: store template graphics or filler text, apply watermarks, insert overlays, the whole nine

Students: create templates for your course work to speed up assignments, save pieces of text during your research and recall it when writing

Abbreviations

Is the keyboard more of your thing? No problem, Clips includes a feature called Abbreviations; enabling you to do on-the-fly text expansion. Assign Abbreviations to your Clips and Clips will type/paste them automatically for you when you enter the abbreviation anywhere on your Mac.

Get Clips and donate to charity!

Buy Clips via MacHeist anytime between today, March 2nd, 2010 and March, 9th, 2010 and MacHeist will donate 25% of the price to a charity of your choice. Get 7 great apps at $19.95 and donate to a worthwhile charity? There has never been a better reason to buy Clips! Take advantage of this great opportunity now, it will only be around for a week.

First off, let me just say: “My bad!”

In anticipation of some really cool new things we are working on, I made a couple minor backend changes that failed to apply to one of activation servers. I have identified and rectified the issue; resolving all of activation conflicts that some of you experienced within the past 24 hours.

Please accept my sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We have some pretty exciting things in the pipeline; if you haven’t subscribed to our RSS Feed, it might be a great time to start. We will be posting status updates as things progress.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

NICHOLAS PENREE
Co-founder & Developer

We picked the Doctors Without Borders charity. Visit the Indie+Relief website for more information.

On a related note, we have just posted updates to a few of our apps:

- Linkinus 2.1.2: added list-only modes and icon/list toggles to the network picker, channel lists and ban lists. Also fixes a crash when connecting to certain IRC networks.

- HealthNut 1.0.2: implemented move and copy operations from one day to another, improved toolbar and richer Journal contextual menus

- Tracks 1.0: added the ability to extend local iTunes searches to iTunes music store songs and play their previews.

Remember, the Indie+Relief operation lasts only one day, so act fast!

HealthNut comes with thousands of built-in food items, each with predefined nutrients and energy values. Browsing this huge database is as easy as opening the HealthNut bar and typing a few characters.

HealthNut also manages your personal goals. Setting goals within HealthNut is key to keeping you motivated and on track. HealthNut’s tolerance thresholds allow for flexible dieting – the fastest way to an improved lifestyle.

HealthNut remembers everything you’ve eaten and lets you review diet changes by jumping days – or years – back.

The features of this initial release include:
* Spotlight-Like Search of 10,000 foods
* Creating New Foods from nutritional facts
* Merging existing food items
* Nutrient breakdown (protein, carbs, fat)
* Instant visual feedback (are you successfully sticking to your diet?)

HealthNut 1.x requires Mac OS X 10.5 or greater, costs €13.99 and a 15 day free trial is available. Student and multi-user discounts are also available. Download the free trial here, buy the full version or view the product page for HealthNut!

And what a treat it is. Ever experience problems with large log files or lacking the option of plain text logging? You are going to like what I am about to write.

To briefly describe the problem mentioned above: the current stable release logs messages in a database that has the tendency to grow a little larger than average for a fixed period of time compared to plain text.
We are, of course working on this size issue as well as reintroducing plain text as logging option you can optionally toggle. This means, you can have the database (with all styles, highlights and colors) log for a couple of days only* and keep it at a more than handy size but keep all logs in plain text and move them as you wish.

* The next version of Linkinus will allow you to set an automatic pruning time for old logs. I.e. you can have Linkinus prune logs older than days.

So what else is new? Tab completion will also receive a spec bump. You are in a very crowded channel and want to highlight a person somewhere in the middle of the nicklist? If he was talking to you a minute ago you’ll now be able to tab complete his/her nick way faster than before because Linkinus can now tab complete in “last spoke” order as well as alphabetically.

Stay tuned and if you want to give it an early try, why don’t you opt into the beta program?

With the introduction of the Styles Catalog, we have updated the Chill Pill website, it now includes a styles browser as well as a guide for creating your own styles.

Grab it now at http://chillpillapp.com or view the full release notes here.

We’re thrilled to announce the availability of Linkinus 2.0.2 and Clips 1.5, both now with full compatibility with Snow Leopard as well as something brand new: Chill Pill 1.0 – Mac integration with the Fever RSS reader by Shaun Inman.

Linkinus

Aside from Snow Leopard, 2.0.2 brings numerous new features and bug fixes. Variant support was added for styles, the filter list usability has been greatly improved, two new styles have been introduced: a completely rewritten version of Simplified, dubbed 2.0 by Ben Alman (aka Cowboy), and I Are Sea!, and irssi-inspired style that should please even the most hardcore of IRC users. For a full set of changes, please see the release notes.

Clips

We didn’t stop with Linkinus! Clips 1.5 brings about some much anticipated performance increases. We are always looking for feedback or feature requests, if you have an idea that you’d like to see make it into Clips, drop us a line. For a full set of changes, please see the release notes.

Chill Pill

Chill Pill allows you to enjoy Fever’s rich RSS experience while taking advantage of Cocoa and all of the other modern technologies in Mac OS X.

Filling the void where web applications fail, Chill Pill allows you to set Fever as your default RSS reader, change hot keys via System Preferences, get notified when new items are available, change Fever’s style with custom styles, and much more! To find out more about Chill Pill, and to download it for free, please visit chillpillapp.com.

That aside: Now with Apple having released Snow Leopard to the general public you certainly wonder about Linkinus’ Snow Leopard compatibility – aside from Rosetta of course.

Due to some … let’s say fancy bone of contention concerning scheduling the final 2.0.2 build will be delayed a little while.

Wait, wait wait a minute … to ease the transition as well as give you some chance to test 2.0.2 on Snow Leopard before it’s actually released for real we give you the chance to join the free and public beta so you can see for yourself. Just follow this link and read the instructions that’ll appear on your display drawn in your own blood assuming you agree to the horrible terms.

One thing in particular you beta users will most likely have notice presuming you take a look at the Styles preferences and Simplified in particular: Linkinus now supports Variants.

Variwhat? Variants are, essential the same theme in different color settings. Like Whisper originally shipped separate as Light and Dark version, Simplified now ships as a single theme – with two Variants. This is one of the many new additions to the theming engine. More detailed changes about this and other shiny things we included secretly in this build will be disclosed later in more detail.

This isn’t all, though! For good measure we’re going to throw in a couple of updated scripts and new themes: I Are Sea! (by drudge) and Simplified (by Cowboy). All of you calling out for “classic” IRC client themes will be delighted to hear that both are variations of the classic [timestamp] [name] [message] layout.

For more Information concerning Simplified visit Cowboy’s blog, please.

Stay tuned for more news, we’ll try to keep you informed and give you more details as soon as possible. As always, we look forward to providing you a great IRC experience. Don’t hesitate to let us know if there is anything we can do for you.

Edit: Linkinus 2.0.1 is supported on Snow Leopard in Rosetta mode.

Let’s begin with the user interface. Linkinus 1.3 was already very similar to the iTunes interface and played along very nicely. The updated interface integrates even better with OS X Leopard and at the same time offers more functionality. Drag and drop items around to add e.g. friends to the (new!) buddy list and then attach them to your Address Book contacts. Drop channels, queries or connections out of the source list to remove then, or simply reorder them in the sidebar.

Other changes to the user interface are a reworked network list. Sorted by size and importance you can quickly get to the hot spots on IRC. If you are looking for something in particular simply use the search and let Linkinus filter the lists for you. With over 330 built-in networks, connecting to your favorite networks is as easy as it gets.
Pretty doesn’t mean stupid though. Linkinus will smartly cycle through all servers in a network until it finds the best one for you.

Didn’t find the network you are looking for or want to modify an existing one to e.g. use SSL? Now is your chance. New networks can be added easily using the network list or modified through the new inspector.

A thing before you connect, you need an identity. With Linkinus you can have any number of IRC identities each with separate name settings, even NickServ passwords attached to the enclosed nicknames. Identities enable you to separate network settings from one another and at the same time quickly duplicate setups for connections.

Linkinus supports automatic authentication to multiple nickname services, including NickServ, NickOP, Q, X, G, SrvAuth and AuthServ.

Linkinus is much more user friendly, allowing IRC newcomers to quickly find their way. A good example of this is the connection hint box. Upon successful connection to a network, new users will be presented with an optional box detailing the next steps.

Browsing, searching and joining channels in a given network is pretty straightforward, as you can see below:

So, now that you are connected to your favorite network and joined a couple of channels why don’t we assign these channels to some groups and enjoy the improved combined chats interface? Distinguishing between different channels and queries is now easier than ever and thanks to grouping you can save any selection for later use – you can even call them up by using shortcuts you assigned.

After a while you might feel the urge to check a few channel settings or even modify the connection settings. Just double click the according item and voilà the new inspectors will appear. They let you modify a great deal more than the previous settings view that 1.3 had to offer. Exclude items from sidebar counts? Disable logging? Tinker with channel modes or add channel bound automatically executed commands. You can even add specific highlights or mute growl and sound for any combination of channels, connections and queries you want to. It’s your choice!

If you like to log IRC conversations, you probably know how annoying ti can be to browse the Finder and look for log files to open— Not anymore! Linkinus now features a built-in log viewer. It’s a complete overview over everything, and it’s searchable.

Also a new feature, you can know quickly view all your the highlighted messages you’ve received. Say you’re coming back to your computer after a few hours of being away; the Highlight and Stars window will show you most of what you’ve been missing: it automatically gathers all your highlighted and starred messages Stars you say? What are those? Starring a message is what ow would call bookmarking a post. You know, keeping it around for future reference.

The “Highlights & Stars” window supports anchors. Just click ‘em and Linkinus will locate the relevant channel in the main window or the log viewer and will scroll to the destination on its own.
Speaking of highlights, you now have the option to use PCRE regular expressions to define what highlights you.

This update allows much more control over the way Linkinus displays IRC for you.
You want to ignore someone completely? Or maybe just don’t want them to be able to send you files or CTCP requests or highlights? Want to disable media embedding for this or that person? The new Filters window lets you do all this and much more.

You want to toggle emoticons if a style supports them? You want to group consecutive messages from the same people? You want to know when you left a conversation and easily find that time in a log? You want a more distinguished styling of consoles, queries and channels all within the same style? You want to quickly highlight everything a single person has said within a channel? You want to change the topic bar style? All this is yours to command now. Really.

Now back to business: Plugins. Linkinus now allows plugin developers to manipulate incoming or outgoing data and perhaps change it before Linkinus has a chance to handle it. On top of that, the included scripts have also been updated to the latest version.

The whole style engine has received a major overhaul. I will not list all the improvements and new features because the list is very long. By popular request, media embedding has been taken to next level and now supports Pastie.org Flickr, IMDB, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, College Humor, Revision 3, Funny or Die, Hulu, Metacafe, Slideshare, Viddler,Qik and well as links to mp4, mp3, swf, avi, wav, m4a files and all images. URL expansion is also supported: hovering over tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly and tr.im URLs to see the full link.

You get the picture: the user interface is great and allows for much more flexibility than it did in 1.3. But don’t think for one second that our main focus hasn’t been core IRC improvements.

One of these improvements is increased feedback about security. When connecting to secure (SSL/TLS) servers, Linkinus will let you know if the remote certificate is invalid, and give you a chance to connect anyway or give up. Chat encryption has also been improved. Linkinus implements full BlowFish support for channels and queries, including for topics. “+p” support has also been implemented to temporarily bypass encryption.

Linkinus still benefits from the rock-solid Agent architecture, which means that Linkinus allows you to quit the application and still remain connected. A problem you might have encountered along the way, you have no idea of knowing what is going on then. With the update, Growl is no longer attached to the GUI but to the Agent and hence you can get notifications about highlights or connection interrupts without needing the GUI. Speaking of Growl, Alerts & Growl Alerts can be toggled globally or on a per-channel basis.

Linkinus now supports UPnP for automatic port configuration when initiating or being invited to file transfers or DCC chats.

Support for channel modes, proxies, various text encodings, as well as support for receiving and displaying IRC colors, as well as underline and bold formatting in chats, have been greatly improved as well.

Pfew, I could go on for hours and 2000 more lines about new features and bug fixes. But I think I’ll stop for now. Keep checking us out and follow us on Twitter. We hope you’ll enjoy using Linkinus 2 as much as we enjoyed making it.

Edit: I guess I should have covered the pricing questions here in the first place. So let’s do this. Linkinus 2 licenses are available to new users for 21.99 € the introductory price of 19.99€ and contains free 2.x updates. A 15-day trial is available to all users.
Note to Linkinus 1.x license holders: if you placed your order on or after April 1st, 2009, then you qualify for a free upgrade to a 2.x license. Linkinus 1.x users who purchased their license before April 1st get a 50% discount. Click here to go to our store!