I’m not a fan of big expensive applications (with the notable exception of Final Cut Pro), but I love open source and shareware that is the product of small companies or individuals. There is something satisfying about sending money to someone who crafts something useful and affordable. Over the past few years I’ve come to rely upon a small collection of applications to read, write and create things for the web. With many of them I didn’t realize how much they have become part of what I do until I switched to my newer MacBook Pro and there were a lot of things missing.
Essential software for me would be NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, Pukka, Twitterific, Flickr Export, Graphic Converter, and Transmit.
Here are the shareware applications that I’ve registered and that I use every day in no particular order:
NetNewsWire
My essential connection with the feeds that I follow is Brent Simmons‘ NetNewsWire. It’s simple and powerful and it made me understand and fall in love with syndication. NetNewsWire is the way that I can manage a lot of information and not miss anything. I use the “flag” function to quickly go through the information many times during the day as I see that there are new articles to read. Then I “lower the flags” and go through what I have flagged and add things to del.icio.us or blog about them. You can use the free “lite” version or register it for more power.
MarsEdit
While I previously have used the web-based editing for the blogs that I write on and used BBEdit when this blog ran on Blosxom, I decided to finally switch to using MarsEdit for my blogging needs as it makes it all so much simpler. With support for Blogger, WordPress, and Vox to name just a few, it makes things consistent and it lets me focus on writing without distractions. Originally developed by Brent Simmons and closely aligned with NetNewsWire, MarsEdit is now in the loving embrace of Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software and it continues to grow and become more powerful. What I love about MarsEdit is that it is powerful and it gets out of your way. Uploading files or adding images is as simple as dragging and dropping. There is a lot of flexibility where you can change the template that you use to preview posts and you can also create almost any tag or markup that you need. I’m writing this in MarsEdit right now and I know that it’s what I’ll be using to write a lot more blog posts.
Pukka
The best way to keep sites organized and to share them with others is del.icio.us and while their simple and powerful design allows you to do a lot, I found that a simpler and fast way was to use Pukka. Justin Miller of Code Sorcery Workshop has created a small and simple program that lets me add bookmarks in an efficient and unobtrusive way. If you just want to post a link, it’s the best way to do it. A little window pops up where I add tags, write a description and post and a little kissing noise lets me know that it has been added as a link. It also has a nifty little icon in my menu bar lets you quickly find tags before launching a web browser.
Twitterific
I use Twitter to microblog things during the day and when I’m on my computer I follow what my peeps are up to and update things with the Iconfactory’s Twitterific. The little bird tweets when there are updates and it makes something simple even simpler and easier to use. It’s always running and it’s a powerful way to stay up to date in a good-looking way. With simple colour-coding, it helps to distinguish between replies and direct messages as well as providing quick keyboard shortcuts for replies. It’s a great way to stay caught up with people when I’m away from the computer so I don’t miss anything. You can use it for free with ads or register it to have it ad-free and to also support the pixel pushers in the factory.
FlickrExport
Pretty much every day I upload photos to Flickr and I organize my images in iPhoto and use Frasier Speirs of Connected Flow’s plugin, Flickr Export, to easily tag and upload my photos. I can create sets, submit photos to groups and choose from the tags that I’ve already used. Flickr Export is one of those tools that I barely think about as it is there and just works. While the official Flickr uploader and the web version of uploading to Flickr has become much more powerful, I still like the simplicity and power of Flickr Export. It seamlessly is integrated into my workflow now and I gladly have registered it a couple of times as it has been updated.
Graphic Converter
While I have Adobe Photoshop, I rarely use it, since I have the much faster, but still powerful Graphic Converter, which has been on my hard drive for many years. When I need to crop, adjust or process an image or a series of images, I don’t even think about firing up Thorsten Lemke’s Graphic Converter as it can deal with any image and do just about anything you could want to do with it. I can save specific aspect ratios for cropping (which is perfect for banners for my blog) and do powerful batch processing to transform groups of images in any way that I can imagine. With regular updates and an astonishing depth of features, it’s a tool that continues to increase in usefulness as time goes by.
Transmit
When I need to set up things on my site or download something I’ve used Panic’s ftp program Transmit to upload and download. With a clean and intuitive interface (I love how it organizes things by “Their Stuff” and “Your Stuff”) along with great power and flexibility I use it whenever I’m updating my sites or backing things up. The favourites feature allows me to save the sites and configurations that I use I can even just drag and drop files to upload them to specific sites and directories. When backing up files I can even just upload things that have changed by using the “synchronize” feature, which saves a lot of time.
All of these applications wouldn’t work unless there were APIs and standards, and it shows how a wonderful ecology can develop when things are open and standards are followed.
