Okay, we all know and love curl at the terminal for downloading files when we want a rock-solid download, with resume and all that... After getting sick of always copying a URL from the browser and going to the terminal typing curl -O and pasting the URL have come up with a little trick that saves some time. In your, say, ~/.bashrc file (or whatever your shell uses as its rc file), define the alias:
alias getit='curl -O `pbpaste`'Mind the directions of the quotes and backticks there! Now, go to the browser, copy the URL, then change to the terminal and type getit. This will call curl to download the URL that's currently on the clibpoard, and save it as the original name.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030528031957548