Click.to

One of the more interesting consequences of the touch screen revolution is the way that developments in smartphones and tablets are bleeding into more traditional hardware and software. Click.to?(free) is a program designed to mimic in standard PCs (and Macs) the ease with which people can share content from tablets, like the iPad, and touch-screen smartphones. In practically any mobile app for touch-screen devices, you can press a single button to share something on Facebook, or email a photo, or otherwise copy and paste content from one application to another. Another example: Surf the Web for a business phone number from an iPhone, and pressing on the number will automatically initiate the call.

Why shouldn't we have this functionality on our plain old laptops and desktops? That's precisely what Axonic, the company that made Click.to, thought.

Time-Saving Shortcut
Click.to is a small downloadable program that works on both Windows (XP, Vista, 7) and Mac computers. After you install and launch it, Click.to will work in any application the moment you try to use the "copy function," whether you press Ctrl+C, Apple-command+C, or right-click and select "copy." A string of icons representing various programs?Microsoft Word, Skype, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Evernote, Bing, and many, many more?appears near the text. Select whichever one you want, and Click.to launches the program and takes the appropriate action. Often, the action is "copy and paste," but other workflows are supported, too. For example, if you select the button for Outlook, Click.to creates a new message and pastes the copied content into the body of the email. Let's say you're reading a PDF and you highlight a term and use Click.to to search Wikipedia. The app pulls the most concise definition Wikipedia has for the selected text and displays it in a bubble right on screen, so you never have to leave the PDF viewer. Try using the Skype function by highlighting a phone number you find online and then picking the Skype icon. Click.to will launch Skype and dial the number.

Depending on what application you choose, Click.to can automatically fill in other appropriate information, such as the subject line of an email (it will use the file name from which the text or image is pulled). Paste into a Word doc, and the source of the pasted info is given at the top of the file.

You can customize which icons appear from an Options menu, and, if Click.to doesn't support an application you want to use, you can add it, although the process might seem slightly complicated for less technical users. To add a new program, you have to be able to identify the executable file for the program on your hard drive.

Getting the Hang of Click.to
The number of clicks that Click.to saves you depends on what kind of workflows you normally do. For sharing to social networks and drafting emails, it's very handy, and the Wikipedia tie-in is brilliant.

I tried to get a lot of mileage out of it for copying and pasting text and found that it does take a little bit of time, maybe a day or two, to configure the app appropriately for your needs and then learn how to use the actions in a way that saves time and increases productivity in the long run.

There are times when Click.to becomes distracting for certain applications or tasks, and thankfully, you can always it off or turn it off only for specified applications, which is a nice touch.

Additionally, if your ultimate goal is to cut down on repetitive motions, you might want to train yourself to use Click.to via the keyboard rather than the mouse. Mac users may also be interested in a productivity tool called Alfred (for Mac), which lets you search for and launch applications and files using a very simple keyboard shortcut. With Alfred, you can also create keyboard shortcuts for some workflows. However, Alfred tries to get you to stick to the keyboard and rely less on the mouse (which can be preferable for some users), whereas Click.to focuses on cutting down the number of keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.

Fewer Clicks With Click.to
Productivity and efficiency experts have long studied the number of clicks and keystrokes the average office worker completes in a day. Click.to tries to decrease that total by removing several steps in the various kinds of information age workflows. The free product is worth downloading if you are looking for a way to reduce the number of times you click your mouse.

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