Due to the demand for Mac discounts during our Black Friday iOS sale, we’re offering a 50% off discount on all our Mac software today only! With prices this low, and one of the biggest Linkinus updates coming (which will be a free update to all 2.x customers), there has never been a better time to buy.

Get Linkinus or Clips for only 9.99 Euros (around $13 USD).

This deal is a Cyber Monday deal and will end tomorrow, so head over to our store and save now!

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.

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.

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.

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.