ControlC: Another OS Feature Disguised as a Web 2.0 App

It seems that many developers are so determined to come up with the next big thing that they are willing to reinvent the wheel, attempting to either piggyback on the success of an existing Web 2.0 app by adding a feature, or "improving" a feature that already exists in an OS. ControlC firmly plants itself in the second camp, convinced that not only do you need improvement in the way your OS's copy and paste feature works, but that your clipboard should be a social application.

ControlC works by installing an app on your PC that hijacks the copy feature, sending all items to your account on their site. Never fear that you've "lost" an item you copied by copying something else; ControlC has saved it for you. And rather than go back to the first thing you copied, you can go to their web site, log into your account there, find your items, click on the right one, and recopy it. Isn't that a time saver? Of course, you can go in and edit what you've copied as well, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of copying?

Of course, ControlC is assuming that you will stay logged into their site constantly to make use of this app. And keep the app running at all times. Because you lose whatever you were going to paste so often that it makes sense to keep an app running just in case. And it's social! You can set your account to save your items privately (the default) or share them with others (a public timeline is shown on the main page). I'm sure other users would find it fascinating that I usually copy a company name when I'm writing to save myself from having to type it over and over again (especially if it's a 2.0 app with missing vowels which throw me for a loop every time).

Of course, when I went to download the app to take it for a test run for this review, I wasn't even able to install it; ControlC is of the opinion that every Mac user has already upgraded to Leopard, and doesn't support anything below OS X 10.5. I was bound and determined however, and borrowed my husband's laptop to use his Windows install to see if ControlC would be better than my initial impression.

ControlC might be helpful for someone who is doing data entry and frequently copying and pasting several of the same bits of data, but adding social sharing onto a feature doesn't make it worthwhile.