If you’re doing code development on a Mac, especially if you’re bouncing onto your web server a lot, there are a lot of little commands and passwords that you need to keep track of. SSH passwords, SVN passwords and accounts, commands for SVN, Rails, Apache, mysql, etc. This is on top of the snippets of text for running the Mac itself and all the various signatures, quotations, recipes, contact information and other endless pieces of data you not only need to store, but be able to quickly retrieve but paste quickly into a browser, email, or shell window.

Enter “ShoveBox“, a great little menubar utility which keeps all this stuff close at hand. There are a lot of clipboard managers, but ShoveBox’s “Organize” window makes the difference. It allows all the clipping to be organized and colorized any way you like. This makes it real easy to track down that Subversion command for creating a branch you only use once or twice in six months - and then just drag-paste it into your terminal window.

Also, unlike many pure clipboard applications, ShoveBox allows you to create blank notes and put whatever you want in them. This is very useful when the text you want to paste is a combination of things - maybe some subversion commands follows by some Ruby on Rails commands - or maybe a signature for a BBS with contact information and a whitty quote.

Twenty-five dollars may seem a little steep for something like this, but the aggrivation it can save over the course of a few months is worth it. And there’s always the chance to get it at a bargain on one of the many Mac software daily sales.

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Recently, though, I acquired a MacBook Pro and am loving it. Not just for the fun of using a Mac again, but also for the fact that it makes a great development machine for web applications. So the site will be adding reviews and articles about the Mac, and using the Mac for software devlopment.

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