Apps I Absolutely Love
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 9:32 pm. 0 comments
It has been a really long time since I have done anything with this blog. While I really need to be doing some work, I realized this evening that there are some fantastic Apps that I use constantly and absolutely love using. There are a lot of great lists like this, and some of these applications I found out about through such blog posts. But, without further ado…
Fluid
My thanks have to go to my friend Duke (@dukeboles) for introducing me to Fluid. I had seen the name of the app show up every now and then on different Mac sites, but I never really investigated it. It takes your most commonly used web-based apps and turns them into a desktop app by limiting the browser aspect of the program to a single website but also gives you an icon in the Applications folder to give you instant access. I am using it with Google’s Mail, Calendar and Docs apps. Mix in a little Google Gears and those Google apps are almost like any other app on your Mac. Get it, use it, love it.
Growl
Know what your Mac is doing. I’m a web designer, I make pretty pictures and then magically turn them into functioning bits of code. Growl makes this process easier by letting me know in a slick UI that I have new email or that the crazy huge file a client put on my FTP share finally finished downloading. Simply put, Growl gets you info you need quickly and unobtrusively.
Twitterific
There are a lot of different desktop utilities for accessing and viewing yours and your friends’ tweets. But, Twitterific is free, integrates with Growl and is made by the cool folks at The Iconfactory.
Dropbox
My brother introduced this to me when he was going to school in Chicago. We needed to get some files to one another, but they were a bit on the large side. So, we just through something in our Dropbox folder on our Macs and it begins to sync with each other. Works great and cross-platform, which I haven’t had to experience yet…but its good to know its there. Also, integrates with Growl to let me know it finished downloading a file and the better part is its free.
Teleport
Have two Macs you need to use but don’t want to switch back and forth between two keyboards and two mice? Teleport allows you to move your mouse cursor from one Mac to another and control two Macs with one keyboard and mouse and no additional hardware. Just a free download that gives you a new System Preferences pane to arrange your two Macs just like they are two displays on a single Mac. This thing even allows you to drag and drop files between computers.