1. A system comprising: at least one processing unit; and at least one memory comprising: a first application, a second application, a clipboard for enabling information exchange between the first application and the second application, and instructions that when executed by the at least one processing unit perform a method comprising: in response to a copy operation initiated by a user while using the first application, generating structured clipboard data comprising a content type attribute representing a type of at least one data item, a description attribute representing any information provided by the user or the first application, and a uniform resource attribute containing a reference to a location of the at least one data item and storing the structured clipboard data in the clipboard, in response to a paste operation initiated by the user while using the second application: automatically processing the structured clipboard data in the clipboard to determine whether the second application is capable of handling text only or whether the second application is capable of handling richer data, if the second application is capable of handling text only, invoking a function to provide the structured clipboard data in the clipboard as text only and executing the paste operation by pasting the text, or if the second application is capable of handling richer data, automatically processing the structured clipboard data in the clipboard, including: processing the type of the at least one data item based on the content type attribute representing the type of the at least one data item, retrieving data for pasting from: (1) either the at least one data item or (2) based on the uniform resource attribute containing the reference to the location and executing the paste operation by: pasting the data and pasting any information provided by the user or the first application.