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“Design depends largely on constraints.” — Charles Eames

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Monday, 15 December 2003

Cool OS X Software roundup

Small apps that make my life much, much easier:

1. Kung-Log — Weblog writing and management, off-line (thanks, John)
2. Shrook — RSS reader extraordinary
3. Address Book — Yes, it comes with the OS, but I don’t think most people appreciate just how cool this app is
4. OmniOutliner — Great if you make lists, nifty XML output and columns capability (try this instead of Stickies)
5. OmniGraffle — If people ever find out about this, Visio’s days are numbered
6. Romeo — Control your mac with a Bluetooth phone (like Salling Clicker, but free)
7. FinkCommander — GUI for controlling UNIX packages (think apt-get)
8. iStumbler — Warchalk!
9. Proteus — Swiss Army Chat Client
10. DivX Doctor — Fixes common problems that prevent DivX movies from playing in Quicktime
11. SSHKeyChain — Unobtrusive SSH-Agent in your menu bar
12. WordService — utilities for manipulating text in any program
13. SmartyPants — Automagically create proper HTML typography (hint: create an Applescript wrapper for it and then put it in your global scripts menu)
14. Painter’s Picker — Apple color picker extension to take the guesswork out of colour theory

And here are the ones I’m still searching for:

• Integration between Address Book and Fire — I want to be able to click any IM address in Address Book to send a message, as well as have Fire’s Buddy Lists automagically populated
• Address Book Sharing — It’s too hard to sync my addresses with Anitra’s; can’t we have shared address books without setting up an LDAP server?
• Shared iCals — While we’re on the subject, being able to do two-way sync with a published calendar would be wicked cool.
• HTML Painter's Picker -- Same thing, but give me the HTML colour codes!

Filed under: Mac

discussion of this entry

caribou said…

Carbon Copy Cloner should be among the MacOSX essentials (imho)

Monday, December 15 2003 at 3:35 PM +10:00

jero said…

Oh, and you forgot LaunchBar, which is truly great.

Tuesday, December 30 2003 at 4:36 PM +10:00

Barry said…

You also might want to check out Path Finder - it can work either as a complete replacement for the Finder, or alongside. It's totally amazing - built-in terminal, pdf viewer, text editor, etc.

Not affiliated with the company, just a happy user!

http://www.cocoatech.com/

Wednesday, December 31 2003 at 10:16 AM +10:00

Robin Wood said…

I was looking for more goodies like Painter's Picker, and I stumbled on this page.

It's true that Painter's Picker doesn't give you the html code; but you can get pretty close. Just click on the Painter's Picker color, then switch to the Color Palettes > Web Safe Color. It automatically takes you to the closest web safe equivalent, including the hex code. Not a perfect work-around, but better than nothing!

Robin Wood
http://www.robinwood.com

Sunday, March 28 2004 at 12:03 AM +10:00

Andrew Delboy said…

QuickSilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) is quickly becoming my program launcher of choice. Think of a run dialog for Carbon apps. Always sitting in memory ready to start the app of your choice or search a particular directory for requested information, this application eliminates the need to dock any applications in your task bar.

It has plug-ins and is very configurable to suit the most finicky of users.

Saturday, January 22 2005 at 8:14 PM +10:00

Alex Hartner said…

Take a look at AddressBook X LDAP (or the older AddressBook 4 LDAP) which allows the sharing of contact information by using a shared LDAP directory. The older version is available for free and the newer suite costs £15.00 for a site license.

The tools suite can be downloaded at http://j2anywhere.com.

Saturday, October 28 2006 at 10:34 AM +10:00

andy said…

Hey try RCWebColorPicker for a html color code picker. To bring the color picker up make a apple script that says

choose color

Saturday, April 21 2007 at 2:31 AM +10:00