Favorite Mac Freeware

For absolutely no reason, a quick top five of my favorite Mac freeware applications…

• Transmission
  Transmission is, without a doubt, the most reliable, usable, and best looking Mac BitTorrent client I’ve ever used. It offers great customization, and can handle a large amount of files while remaining relatively lightweight.

• Sequel Pro
  Sequel Pro is a fantastic MySQL application for the Mac. Its clean, fast, and as far as I can tell, bug free. If you have to spend a significant amount of time working with MySQL, I’d really suggest trying this.

• Symbolic Linker
  Symbolic Linker is a tiny contextual menu plugin that when clicked, will create a Symbolic Link for the selected file for you. This is a huge time saver if you ever create symbolic links on a Mac. Its one of those apps that I was wishing existed, and was incredibly happy when I discovered that it did exist. Its just plain genius.

• NetNewsWire
  I actually bought NetNewsWire many years ago, long before it became a freeware app. It is a fantastic RSS news reader. Many have created beautiful themes for the app. However I don’t always use NetNewsWire for its news reading capabilityes. I use it most of the time for it’s dock menu. It has a great dock menu that lets you know when your favorite websites have updated via RSS. The best way for me to explain it is with a screenshot.

• Fluid
  Fluid is another genius app. Fluid allows you to create “SSBs”, or site specific web browser. Basically you can make custom browsers that only go to a designated site. The fact is that there are many websites that we frequent constantly, or that we always have up in a browser window. The natural next step is designated ‘apps’ for those sites that you always have to visit, and Fluid does it wonderfully.

Nuvola 1.2

This is just a quick update to my Nuvola theme for Bluebird. The main difference is that it shows relative time instead of the regular time (such as ‘3 minutes ago’). When you mouse-over a tweet, the time disappears and reply/dm/permalink/retweet buttons appear. Its kind of fun!

Thanks to Na Wong & Alex Sancho for help with getting the relative time back!

Download Nuvola 1.2.

Nuvola 1.1 for Bluebird 1.1

I’ve updated Nuvola. Please see the update here.

I’ve made a quick update to Nuvola for the new version of Bluebird . It is a bit different, now when your mouse hovers over a tweet, buttons for replies, direct messages, and re-tweeting will appear in the upper right-hand corner. ;)

Download Nuvola 1.1.

Nuvola!

I’ve updated Nuvola. Please see the update here.

I’ve updated my Bluebird theme that I released last week. Although it looks very similar, it was pretty much completely redone. I have renamed it Nuvola, which means “cloud” in Italian. I figure it fits since it is white, blue and gray. ;)

When you double-click anywhere in a tweet, buttons will slide down for replying, direct messaging, and re-tweeting. It also now features relative time, and when you click the time of the tweet, it will take you to the tweet’s permalink in your browser. Lastly, the background colors have been refined for readability. You can see the new features in action here.

Thank you to Na (for relative time & avatar mask) and to Laurent (for his amazing themes!). :D

Download Nuvola.

Bluebird!

I’ve updated Nuvola. Please see the update here.

So a early beta of the great little Mac OSX twitter application, Bluebird was released yesterday! I have been testing it for the past few weeks, and its just a fantastic little app.

I quickly whipped up a mod of one of the bluebird themes for fun, you can see a preview of it above… and you can download my Bluebird theme here. :)

[For anyone who downloaded it off of my twitter, little changes include: better spacing overall and better-looking direct messages.]

Automatic Tr.im URL Shortening & Click Tracking with TextExpander

The guys who make one of my favorite applications, TextExpander, posted a great tip a while back to automatically shorten urls that are on the clipboard with the tr.im service.

It works wonderfully, except there is no way to track how many people click your shortened urls because you’re not logged into your tr.im account when the urls are shortened. There is a crazy easy way to log in to your tr.im account when TextExpander shortens your urls.

• Add this line as a new TextEpxander snippet and set it as an Applescript. Fill in your username and password where it says username:password.

• do shell script "curl --basic -u username:password http://tr.im/api/trim_url.xml?url=pbpaste | tr '>' 'n' | tr '<' 'n' | grep -m 1 -A 1 url | tail -1"

  
  

• You can also simply download this TextExpander snippet to add to TextExpander. You still must put your username and password where it says username:password. :)

• Set the shortcut to something like “trm” or similar.

Thats it! Anytime you want to shorten a url in any application, copy the url to the clipboard. Next go to where you’d like to paste the url. Type in “trm” or your shortcut, and it will paste the shortened url automatically.

Recent Mac Finds

I’ve been trying to be good about saving my pennies, but I must admit that I’ve still purchased a couple pieces of Mac software recently…

• ShoveBox
  I finally bought this great notes app. I’m very picky about my note applications. The simpler, the better. I think I will always be a Notational girl at heart. I can really write a whole post on different Mac note apps. To make a very long rant short, ShoveBox is overall a very very nice notes app. Its clean, stays in the menubar, supports hot keys, and has a fun “quickjot” function for taking quick notes. It also has a very promising beta iPhone app for syncing.

• Fontcase
  Easily the nicest looking and one of the must useful Mac font management applications out there. I am not the biggest typophile out there, I tend to stick to a few favorite favorite fonts, but I still find it to be a crazy useful app. It also feels very lightweight to me compared to the other font management apps I’ve tried in the past. If you ever use anything other than Times New Roman or do anything with design, Fontcase is a must-have.

• LittleSnapper
  I really didn’t want to like LittleSnapper. But over time it grew on me and now I can’t live without it. I don’t use the website they provide for posting snapshots, but I did (to spite myself) fall in love with the app’s concept itself. its very freeing to never have to organize screenshots of all kinds and to no longer have tons of random screenshots sitting on the desktop. Now they’re all in one place automatically as soon as they’re taken. Once you get used to the workflow you won’t look back.

The Incredibly Dumb Solution To Photoshop CS4 & Spaces

So, I’ve been using Adobe CS4 Photoshop with Leopard’s Spaces for quite a while now. Originally I had Photoshop not assigned to any space, and then I tried with Photoshop assigned to a specific space. Neither setting worked, and anytime I’d switch from a different application back to Photoshop, I’d end up with what you see above.. a completely unusable Photohsop CS4… menus missing and nothing working.

Then Matty gave me the idea to try using Photoshop CS4 in every space… and magically, it worked!

Its extremely sad that I didn’t think to switch it myself… but its seriously nice to not have a UI mess every three minutes. Adobe should make their products work properly with a major Leopard feature, or at least warn Leopard users about it. Seriously.

The Top 5 Mac Apps of 2008

A (very) short list of my favorite mac applications of the year…

• Dropbox - Dropbox might just be the best and most original idea of the year. File sharing and file syncronization became simple and speedy. Enough said.

• Bowtie - Easily the best, simplest, and most affordable iTunes accessory ever. You can read my quick review here.

• LaunchBar 5 Beta - Years ago before Quicksilver I used LaunchBar. Well, LaunchBar has come back in a big way. Its incredibly quick and smooth. Once you try it, you won’t be able to use anything else. Its that good. It just really needs a way to customize its appearance and perhaps a way to add Del.icio.us bookmarks.

• Eventbox - Eventbox is a great concept with a great design. It still needs some development, though. But its really has awesome potential… and the guys who make it are open to ideas, which is the best part.

• Flow - The fact is that Transmit by Panic is still a great and reliable Mac FTP app. No question. However Flow attempts to be a bit different. I have to say I was weary of switching from Transmit, but I have really grown to enjoy using Flow.

Bowtie

My friend Laurent helped create a new Mac application called Bowtie. It’s easily the best app out there to accompany iTunes.

Its basically an iTunes remote app. The beauty of it is in its simplicity. It can display album artwork and let you control iTunes from the desktop. It will post what you’re listening to last.fm for you. It does these things without hogging your computer’s resources and while looking beautiful. Bowtie boasts an extremely easy to use theming system based on html+css+javascript. It already has tons of themes, and promises to have many more. Absolutely fantastic.

The best part though is… its free! So go get it! :D