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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/products/apis_macro_recorder/features.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!

Automator

One thing I love about Apple Computers is that they have Automator, a tool that lets its users do routine tasks quickly, safely and easy. Sadly, such a tool isn’t available in Windows by default, but it’s available as different products.

Today we’re going to review Apis Ceratina from Mavrsoft.com, a tool that does just that. It records the action you want to repeat, and when played, it does the action for every item you want it to do. The software bases its technology on macros.

Seeing the program, although simple in design, complex in features made me smile. I liked the fact that I had the opportunity to have different macros and I could save them for posterity. Who knows when I might need it?

The guys from Mavrsoft also incorporated a feature in which with a combination of keys I could easily launch the macro, without going through the whole interface.

One nice thing is that I could limit the macro to a number of items on the screen. It wasn’t necesarry to process all the items, but the first in my Documents folder. What I did is add the "2007" year extension to my .xls files.

For the purpose of this review, I went a little further. I bumped into nice features like the scheduler which allowed me to have tasks done at a certain time, great feature if, for example I wanted the computer to work for me when I was away, or at night as I have a "bad" habit of leaving the PC turned on for quick and easy access.

Creating macros was a breeze. You just need to press "Record", you can "Pause" at any time, and when clicking "Play" the macro is executed for you. Also, a definable "View" could be done, which really reduces the chances of a disaster on your screen. Overall, an interesting automation tool that was programmed with easiness in mind. From the view of a developer the whole program is a: Great job!

Apis Ceratina Automate Your Process Easily

Apis Ceratina I found out something interesting online today. It’s about this software called Apis Ceratina where you can actually use it to automate repetitive tasks with a single mouse click or a keystroke. Just imagine – you have thousands of files or just make it 1000 files on your computer which starts with Report and Date whereby what differentiates each files is the date.

One way to change the filenames is through repetitively select one file by one file and while pressing ‘F2’ to rename the filename – At least that was what I am doing in the past. Now that with Apis Ceratina, the task is automated!

Just launch the program and record your actions. After recording your actions, press the ‘play’ button on the software and the program will automatically repeat what you have done to the files that is in that particular folder.

Well the software might be a little pricey – selling at $29.95 USD and it might only be suitable for people who have a large database of files on their computer. It’s ideal to help you automate a process and this saves time. For companies that have high changes on their data, Apis Ceratina might just be the thing that they are looking for.