The 12 Days of Giveaways: Day 5 – TextExpander

Another day, another Lifehack Giveaway!

Hopefully, over the past few days you have seen that we here at Lifehack aren’t screwing around this holiday season; we are hooking you up with some of the best productivity and lifestyle apps and tools to help you better yourself in the coming year. And, boy oh, boy is today’s giveaway no different with some productivity wares from Smile Software.

Before we get to the new stuff, let’s first congratulate yesterday’s winner of the NerdFitness Rebel Fitness Guides, Mark Eldridge, with this inspirational health goal for 2012:

My goal is to run the Marine Marathon in October with my 21 year old daughter.  I had been running for several years.  A couple of years ago my 20 year old daughter picked up the running bug saying I was her inspiration.  Since then she’s lost 30 pounds and just completed her first marathon.  A year and a half ago, I herniated a disk in my back so I’ve had to stay on the sidelines for a while. Now I need to lose 30 pounds. I’m just starting back and look forward to running with my girl.

Mark, you just picked yourself up the three-pack of NerdFitness Rebel Fitness Guides. Now, get to work on those fitness goals for 2012. Congratulations!

Today’s Giveaway

Smile Software creates some of the best productivity apps around for the Mac including one of the apps that I could never live without; TextExpander. If you don’t know what TextExpander is let me break it down for you; if you type a lot of stuff over and over again, and you want to save time doing it, TextExpander helps you accomplish that goal.

TextExpander brings you a way to create custom “snippets” that create large portions of text, run scripts, insert images and rich text, etc. You can enter these snippets system-wide on your Mac making TextExpander one of the most time-saving apps I have ever used. Here are just some of the things you can do:

  • Create commonly used text pieces like email signatures, responses to commonly sent emails, blocks of code, “boiler-plate” text, etc.
  • Automatically fix commonly misspelled words
  • Create snippets that allow you to reposition your cursor after expanding some text. This is great for inserting a ‘<a href=”"></a>’ element and then positioning the cursor between the quotes or the chevrons.
  • Run custom scripts for all you hackers out there
  • Sync snippets library with Dropbox to use with TextExpander Touch on your iDevice
  • Many more things that you will come up with day in and day out

I can’t live without TextExpander and two Lifehack readers can find out what I mean by winning one of the two free licenses to TextExpander from Smile Software. Remember, TextExpander is for Mac only.

By the way, why don’t you check out Smile on Facebook or follow them on Twitter?

How to Enter

In order to enter to win a license of TextExpander, you need to leave a comment below or on our Facebook fan page that answers the following:

“What text expansion or automation from TextExpander will save you the most time and why?”

Leaving a comment on both our Facebook fan page and here at Lifehack.org will get you 2 entries, but you need to give us two TextExpander time-savers – no copying and pasting!

The Fine Print

Employees of Smile and of Stepcase (including current independent contractors of both) are not eligible for this contest. The two winning entries will be judged by the Stepcase Lifehack editing team and winners will be notified on the platform in which their winning entry was placed (either on the Lifehack.org Facebook wall or by email through our commenting system here the website). For those entering the contest with a comment on Lifehack.org, in order to be considered eligible, you MUST leave a contact email when leaving a comment (it’s the only way we’ll know how to contact you). Entries must be submitted by 10 am Eastern the following weekday and winners will be chosen by 12 pm Eastern time on the same day. The winner will be announced the same day on Lifehack.org, and will be notified beforehand.

Good luck!

  • Brandon LaRocque

    “What text expansion or automation from TextExpander will save you the most time and why?”To be honest, I write a lot of letters – and they usually always say the same thing. If I utilized automation, I’d save hours throughout my day. I wish I was kidding or understating this. I send about 150 emails a day, and half of them say the same thing. I’m currently just copy-pasting everything, but I’ve been considering TextExpander for some time, and I think it would make a lovely Xmas gift. :)larocque.brandon@gmail.com

  • Christian Selvaratnam

    TextExpander will save me having to type out my address in fulll – #add and it will write itself

  • Glenn Hollingsworth

    Date and time. I log what I do throughout the day and entering date and time always slow me down. This would be awesome.

  • http://www.mostlymaths.net/ Ruben Berenguel

    Hi Chris, 

    depends if it is the iDevice version or the Mac version. The Mac version? Nothing. Emacs does all the text expansions I need and many, many more things for writing. 

    In my iDevices? Lots and lots! From date and time logging to Facebook, twitter, names, mails… Whatever!

    Ruben

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=781709852 Mark Antoniou

    Repetitive email messages, inserting dates, and manipulating text copied to the clipboard.

  • http://slightlyinsightful.com/ Ammon

    Canned email responses, inserting email addresses, shipping addresses, dates, et.

  • Stef Gonzaga

    Textexpander will save me time from inserting my byline for blog posts in HTML format, content for product descriptions, and shipping and billing info when shopping online. I sure hope I get a copy! 

    • http://vardy.me TheMikeVardy

      Congratulations! You’re one of the winners! We’ll be in touch with you shortly on how to claim your winnings…and thanks for entering!

  • Anonymous

    it’ll help me with immensely with standard responses to email…can’t wait to win!

  • jasedit

    I have to write a daily status update for work, and it’d make my life far easier to be able to shortcut half the boilerplate. Plus I can imagine it making Markdown far easier to work with. Here’s to hoping!

    • http://vardy.me TheMikeVardy

      Congratulations! You’re one of the winners! We’ll be in touch with you shortly on how to claim your winnings…and thanks for entering!

  • Mary Parmentier

    I have to be honest: I’m not quite sure how this will help me, as I’ve never used it! But I’m very excited to shorten my long name and email address, insert dates, and perhaps convert my often-used expressions into quick and easy replies, increasing my productivity!