Software developer KavaSoft released KavaServices 3.0, a utility that adds a variety of useful menu items to Mac OS X's Services menu on Friday. With KavaServices, users can execute commands such as translate, encode for HTML, calculate, convert units, sort, change case, execute commands, and more. These commands replace the selected text in any Mac OS X application, without the need to switch to a different program, or copy and paste.
In addition to the aforementioned services, the program can also translate Web sites and e-mail messages into English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Dutch, Greek, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian as well as encode special characters into HTML entities. With one keystroke, KavaServices can convert accented characters, characters in other alphabets and special punctuation marks for display on the Web. KavaServices 3.0 adds the ability to encode URL links, and to convert accented text to plain ASCII.
Other bells and whistles include the ability to calculate mathematical expressions, basic arithmetic, trigonometry, arithmetic with scientific units, base conversions, currencies, area, energy, power, pressure, speed, temperature, time, volume and weight.
Interestingly enough, KavaServices 3.0 offers a quick gateway to Mac OS X's Terminal program from any application. Select a command, hit a keystroke, and the command will be replaced by its result as if you had typed it in the Terminal.
KavaServices 3.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run and retails for a US$20 shareware registration fee.