Enter the CopyPaste Utility Programming Contest to win $500 in Prizes
Starting June 15 and running till September 15 there will be a contest that anyone can enter to win up to $500. All it takes is writing a useful tool that can be used within CopyPaste to act on the clipboard contents. The contest is being held to heighten awareness that the Mac is the original and best platform of application integration and also to promote greater use, understanding and better programming of utilities that work with the clipboard.
CopyPaste is the shareware utility that was awarded a 5 mouse rating by MacUser and shareware utility of the year 1996. CopyPaste has also been featured in MacWeek, TidBits and many other magazines. CopyPaste magnifies the clipboard in many different ways and has been very popular with web developers, editors, writers, dtp professionals and everyone who uses the clipboard. CopyPaste (a new version will be released on 6/11) can be found at:
http://www.scriptsoftware.com
The tools in CopyPaste are 68k FKEY code resources which read the clipboard, do a job and then write a result back to the clipboard. The programmers toolkit with sourcecode examples for many tools can be found at:
Fkeys are simple and very small code resources so students should be fearless and enter even if you've never programmed before. Fkeys are great for learning programming because they are small modules and if you're already an experienced programmer, then this is a chance to make $100 per hour.
The utilities already in CopyPaste act on the clipboard contents. There are text, picture, date and internet utilities. They are extremely useful because whatever application your using they can uppercase/lowercase, comment/uncomment, extract url's/eddresses, grab screen, remove spaces, insert date and many more but there are not enough.
Many new tools could be created. Some possible area are graphics filters, lexical analyzers, mathematical calculators, date converters for Jewish or Hebrew or Islamic calendars or others, programmers helpers like hex to dec to bin, Internet tools which could act on Eddresses or URL's in the clipboard, encryption/decryption, picture and icon tools, and there are many more tools that can be invented which use the clipboard as the easiest and handiest way to change and exchange data.
Other features built into CopyPaste
* Clip Extender - gives 10 easy to access clipboards via menu or key command.
* Clip Recorder - remembers the last 10 items copied via command c.
* Clip Archive - copied data is appended to one of 10 text files on disk.
* Save Clipboards thru Restarts
* Clip Sets - Sets of 10 clipboards can be loaded and saved to disk.
* Tag and Drop - copy selected text with a single mouseclick.
* CopyPaste Palette - a floating window that allows you to view/use all clips.
* Application Switcher - lets you switch between running applications.
* Clipboard Viewer - lets you view the content of your clipboards.
* CopyPaste Utilities - these are internet, text, picture and date and time utilities that act on the clipboard. This is the place to fit in your newly created tools and the place to test them out.
Any programmer can make as many fkeys as they want and submit them to us for judging. The third best fkey will receive $100, the second best $150 and the best $250. Each will be judged on how useful, creative and unique they are and also how well they work with CopyPaste and the clipboard. The code submitted must be owned by the programmer but can be from a past project.
All submitted source code will be published on our site as freeware to help other programmers.
The top 3 fkey utilities will be included in future versions of CopyPaste and all those who enter a working fkey tool will be given a registered version of CopyPaste. Winners will all be announced and their accomplishments described to the media and on our web site.
Show us what you can do! This is an international contest so we want to see some international spirit and competition. Which country has the best programmers in the world? What programming language creates the best utility Basic, Pascal, C, C++, etc? What age group is the most creative? Apple has a great invention in the clipboard but it has not evolved. Help create the next phase in clipboard development.
Contact us for more details or if you have any questions.
