Click.to

One of the more interesting consequences of the touchcreen revolution is the way that developments in smartphones and tablets are bleeding over into more traditional hardware and software. Click.to is a program designed to mimic in standard PCs (and Macs) the ease with which people can share content from a touch screen. In practically any app for smartphones and tablets, 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. Why shouldn't we have this functionality on our plain old laptops and desktops?

Time-Saving Shortcut

Click.to is a small downloadable program that works on both Windows (XP, Vistas, 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 appears near the text. Select whichever one you want, and Click.to launches the program and pastes the content in the applicable spot. 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.

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 people. To add a new program, you have to be able to identify the executable file for the program on your hard drive.

Numerous applications are already supported from the get-go: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Outlook, Word, Excel, Wikipedia, Gmail, Evernote, Flickr, PDF, Blogger, WolframAlpha, Bing Translate, Amazon, YouTube, and many more. Depending on what application you paste into, Click.to will 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 will be listed at the top of the file.

One of my favorite features is how the Wikipedia icon works. Rather than pasting your copied text directly into Wikipedia's search bar, Click.to 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 first application.

When Click.to Isn't So Time-Savey

The number of clicks that Click.to saves you depends on what kind of copying and pasting you normally do. For sharing to social networks and drafting emails, it's pretty handy, and the Wikipedia tie-in is brilliant. But when it came time for me to get some actual work done, I occasionally found Click.to distracting because it was offering its services at times when it they wouldn't work for me. One example: I was copying and pasting information from multiple sources into one existing Notepad document. I didn't want to start a new file every time I copied more text. I just wanted to continue pasting into the file that was already open, and I couldn't find a way to do that with Click.to. However, I later learned that there is an action that could have helped me, but it wasn't apparent enough for me to find on my own. It's called back-action, and to use it, you have to add the "browse to" button (a red icon with two white arrows) to your Click.to commands list.

To use the back action, you first have to create a new document using Click.to with the first "paste." Then, the next time you use Click.to, you can select the "browse to" icon, and the program will bring you to the file you pasted into last. You then have to use a command for paste (Ctrl+V or Apple command+V, or right-click and select "paste"), as the Click.to function in this case only returns you to the right file and doesn't do the pasting part.

If Click.to is still distracting for certain applications or tasks, you can always it off. And you can turn it off only for certain applications, which is a nice touch.

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 copy-and-paste process, which is usually more like: select text or item, copy, find and launch other application, open new document or navigate to appropriate spot, paste. The free product is worth downloading if you tend to use copy-paste workflows often.