One thing missing from Mac OS X is a simple and free paint program, you know like that other OS has. But there are several free programs like this you can download. Seashore leads the pack by being both easy to install and use, but still having powerful features like layers support and good export options.
The system add-on GimmeSomeTune works with iTunes and gets album artwork and song lyrics for you. It will even send out a message over iChat telling your friends what song you are listening to.
You can rip a music CD into your iTunes collection easily using iTunes. But why can’t you do the same for the videos on a DVD you own? That’s a question to ask a lawyer, if you have all afternoon to listen to the answer. But if you want just the technology to make it happen, then Handbrake is what you need. It imports and converts content from a DVD. It can even format it for your iPod or iPhone. You can hold the DVD in one hand and your iPod in the other if it makes you feel better.
There are many Unix tools to re-encode and convert video and audio. But you have to really know what you are doing to use them. Fortunately, FFMpegX provides a great Mac interface to those tools. We use it here at MacMost to encode all of our video episodes into mp4 format. You can use it to convert video to work on your iPod or iPhone. It also compresses a lot better than QuickTime Pro or direct export from most video tools.
While Pages, Word and even TextEdit are good for word processing, programmers and Web developers need to edit plain text files all the time. The granddaddy of all text editing programs is BBEdit. It’s expensive, but for serious coders it is the environment they live in every day. It has tons of features and customizes itself according to what type of text file you are editing: html, php, c, css, xml, and so on.
With more and more paperwork happening without the paper, your control over those PDF files becomes more important. What’s frustrating is that you can’t edit, write on or draw on PDF files like you can with paper, even using some professional PDF programs. PDFpen from SmileOnMyMac allows you to do almost anything with a PDF file, and then save it back out as a PDF file. So you can mark up or simply sign a PDF document. Very handy.
Your computer is the perfect place to store information. But what about when that information is so important that you want to guarantee that no one can get at it? Data Guardian gives you a secure database fore information, protected by strong encryption. So now you can store your credit card numbers, passwords and other bits of important data on your Mac without worry.
This handy program corrects a major problem with Time Machine: you can’t schedule your backups. Instead, Time Machine insists on backing up every hour, never mind that you are using your Mac at the time. With Time Machine Editor you can change the interval to something else, like 4 hours, or set specific times for the backup to run. Plus, it’s free.
If you’ve got a cluttered desktop you know that it can sometimes be distracting when you are trying to concentrate on a single task like writing or drawing. Backdrop is a simple free application that hides your desktop with a solid color. You can also hide other applications or individual windows behind it to concentrate on a single document.
Ever wanted to be able to file away email with just a keystroke? MailActOn is a plug-in for Apple Mail that adds the ability to assign actions to keystrokes. The actions can be as simple as moving a message to a folder, or as complex as running an AppleScript. You can also have rules automatically applied to messages after some other action — such as when you send an email. If you get a lot of email and find it tedious to click and drag messages around the Mail interface, then you should check out MailActOn.
Leopard’s built-in screen sharing is fantastic as long as you are going between Mac Leopard machines. For older Mac OS X versions, and for connecting to Windows machines, you’ll want to get Chicken of the VNC I know the name sounds cheesy, but this open source and free VNC client will allow you to view the screen of any machine that has a standard VNC server running, or even a Mac OS X Tiger machine with VNC functionality turned on.
Audacity is a free, open source audio editor. It is simple, yet has a lot of depth. It is great for times where GarageBand is overkill for a simple recording task. And it concentrates on just audio recording and editing, which can make it more powerful than GarageBand for that. You can edit with precision, apply filters and effetcs, and export in a variety of formats. Even if recording or editing audio is a rare task for you, or you already own another sound editing application, you should download the free Audacity application and add it to your arsenal of programs.
Before Time Machine Apple produced a great piece of backup software, called Backup. The only thing that kept it from competing with other pieces of backup software was its weird distribution method: you got it by subscribing to .Mac (now MobileMe) and you could find it in the Software folder on your iDisk. So it is free, as long as you are already paying for MobileMe.
Well you can still find it there and it still works great. It offers many advantages over Time Machine. You can choose exactly what to backup — such as specific folders or types of files. You can also back up to many different types of places — like a hard drive, a CD or DVD, a network drive or even your iDisk. You could also schedule backups or do it manually. And the backups are incremental.
While I still use Time Machine as my main backup procedure, I also still use Backup to do an occasional second backup to another hard drive at a different location. And while on the road, I do backups of my Documents folder to my iDisk.
This week’s recommendation is FileSalvage. What this program does is to look on a hard drive for deleted or corrupt files and tries to get salvage them for you. It is fairly expensive, at $80, but when one of my digital camera memory cards became corrupt, I paid the money to see if I could get my precious pictures off of it. And it worked. Later on, I accidentally deleted some files from my hard drive and emptied the Trash. Once again, FileSalvage rescued them. So well worth the money if you have the need.
If your desktop is a mess, it can be hard to concentrate on your current task. You can make it better by hiding all of the apps you aren’t currently using. Spirited Away is a free Mac OS X add-on that will automatically hide applications that you haven’t used for a while. It is highly customizable, allowing you to set applications that are never automatically hidden, for instance.
Ever copy something to the clipboard to use later, and then when you go to use it you find it is no longer in the clipboard? The usually happens when you do another copy and paste in the meanwhile. But now to get back that original clipping, it is difficult or even impossible?
Jumpcut solves this very simply by keeping a running list of your clipboard. You can select any of the previous 15 or so clipboard contents and paste it, rather than just the last one.
It is open source and free, and something that no Mac should be without.
For some of us, an FTP program is a basic requirement of any computer. We need to move files to and from server and maintain content on Web sites. There is no lack of FTP programs for the Mac. Plenty to choose from. But Transmit from Panic gives you a simple drag-and-drop interface just technical enough to get things done, but simple enough to be easy to use. It’s powerful too, supporting all sorts of types of file transfer. Well worth $30.
There are some utilities that no Mac should be without. And when they are free, you really have no excuse not to at least try it. iStat Menus is a great collection of menu bar items that monitor everything about your Mac. You can see CPU usage, temperature readings, power usage, drive space, and tons of other bits of data. CPU usage, for instance, can tell you which apps are hogging the most power. There is also a Dashboard widget version called iStat Pro.
We find that most note-taking, project planning and business organization tools are too restrictive. They want you to organize your information in a certain way that may or may not fit your business or style. VoodooPad is a little personal wiki program that runs on your Mac and allows you to create almost any organizational system you want. You can keep notes, to-do lists, frequently used text and images, ideas and almost anything all together and linked to each other in a way that works for you.
The “Lite” version is free, and it may be all you need. It is packed with features and there is also a full and pro version if you want more power or to support the creators. You can read more and download it at FlyingMeat.com.
