With this Sponsored Post, I wanted to talk about an interesting product. As most of you know, my world is Gentoo Linux, but as a web programmer, I do an insane amount of work on Windows. I like to make sure that I’m using operating systems from Linux to Windows to MacOSX to keep in touch with clients and other IT professionals.

The product, which is Apis Ceratina by Mavrsoft (visit their web site at: http://www.mavrsoft.com/product.html) is a great macro tool for Windows to perform repetitive tasks quickly. With Apis Ceratina (man, that’s a hard name to remember | say | type), you can record clicks and keystrokes, and then replay them. When I heard this, I was wondering, “what’s the point?”. But in their demonstration they illustrated it very nicely.

With this Sponsored Post, I wanted to talk about an interesting product. As most of you know, my world is Gentoo Linux, but as a web programmer, I do an insane amount of work on Windows. I like to make sure that I’m using operating systems from Linux to Windows to MacOSX to keep in touch with clients and other IT professionals.

The product, which is Apis Ceratina by Mavrsoft (visit their web site at: http://www.mavrsoft.com/product.html) is a great macro tool for Windows to perform repetitive tasks quickly. With Apis Ceratina (man, that’s a hard name to remember | say | type), you can record clicks and keystrokes, and then replay them. When I heard this, I was wondering, “what’s the point?”. But in their demonstration they illustrated it very nicely.

With Apis Ceratina you could open a folder with multiple files and quickly rename all of them. Simply, open the program, click ‘record’. At this point you would rename one file (let’s say you needed to prepend them with a value), then click ‘stop’ on the program. Next you would select the macro you recorded, and change the ‘Repeats’ value to the number of files in the directory. Hitting play, would magically prepend the value to all the files.

In Linux, you could write a bash script that loops through the file listing in the directory and perform a ‘mv’ with the pre-pended value. I have no idea what you would need to do in the Windows world if you were to do this with scripting. Other than renaming files, you could perform other tasks. For instance, you could record a macro that opens several programs with one click!

Not a bad product at all. They offer a ‘try’ and a ‘buy’. Currently the program is $29.95 USD.