Wait, this blog isn't about Macs...what gives? I recently had to install apps onto 2 different Mac laptops (well, one was actually a Hackintosh), but it got me thinking of a list of apps that I've loyally used throughout the years and cannot do without. It's a combination of office/work and personal apps. Some go back a bit in time, some are more recent. So here goes:
Aqua Data Studio
This is an awesome multi-RDBMS querying tool. It supports SQL Server 2000/2005, Oracle, MySQL, DB2, among others.
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
Despite competing tools from Apple and OpenOffice, this is still the best product suite for the workplace if your workplace is married to Microsoft Office products. Excel, Word and Powerpoint are fully compatible with the Windows versions, but IMO Keynote is still a better piece of presentation software.
Evernote
The best notetaking app EVER. It does tagging, text recognition and indexing of PDFs and images. It allows you to e-mail images and images, clip from your web browser (via plugins or bookmarklets) to your notebook as well. It's available in various platforms - Windows, Mac OS X, web, iPhone, and Windows Mobile.
Eclipse
Okay, IMHO not the best IDE, but the best one available that's free on the Mac and probably has the largest number of plugins/extensions available for an IDE. I'm not a fan of the UI though.
Safari 4 (beta)
Beats the pants off IE, better than Firefox though it lacks a proper plugin architecture, but it catches up to Google Chrome.
Firefox
One of the most flexible browsers out there with a great plugin architecture, which makes it one of the most versatile tools out there.
Microsoft Messenger 6/7
I actually have both installed. I have Messenger 7 to have the current version, but I use Messenger 6 to utilize our company's IM servers.
Remote Desktop Connection 2
This is essential for connecting to remote machines. Why have a virtual machine when you can remote to your work desktop or other servers who can do all the heavy lifting?
VMWare Fusion
Essential if you want to have a full Office suite or any other applications that are only available on Windows, such as MS Project and Visio. Yes, there are Mac alternatives such as FastTrack and OmniGraffle, but there's nothing like the real thing.
Google Desktop
Yes, Mac OS X has Spotlight, but I love the speed of Google Desktop.
TweetDeck
The essential Twitter client for all Twitter power users. Available as an AIR app, this app is not specific to Mac OS X.
Yammer
The corporate alternative to Twitter.
Dropbox
I use this to synchronize documents across my various Macs. It basically uses a hot folder to synchronize via Dropbox's servers to push and pull files. I have symlinks in the hot folder that point to my regular Documents folder so I don't have to move or migrate my existing document folder structure to accommodate the hot folder.
Mozy
The simplest, easy-to-use online backup service. The first 2 GBs are free.
Quicksilver
One of the most essential app launchers. It's fast and it has a really good plugin archtiecture.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Say Who Dialer & Maps
Following up on my review of Melodis Dialer, this is a review of Say Who Dialer & Maps from DialDirections.com.
Say Who is a bit different than Melodis in that Say Who allows you to also look up an address, in addition to voice dialing, by speaking it into the application, and then opening up the iPhone Maps application with that address. It also allows you to select the contact's phone number to SMS them by opening up the iPhone SMS app with their SMS number (note that it does not do voice-to-text dictation). Melodis Dialer performs the above functions (though I accidentally omitted this in my review but has been since updated), Say Who allows you to speak a phone number into the application and will dial that number for you. Sweet!!
Say Who performs the voice recognition in the same manner as Melodis and all other voice dialing apps in that it records your voice lookup, sends the sound file to its servers, performs voice-to-text translation and then attempts to find a best match to your contacts, to an address, or to a set of numbers. All the heavy lifting is done server-side.
I would say that Say Who's competition is an overlap of Melodis Dialer, Google Apps, and vlingo. Not only can it do voice dialing, but address and business lookup, though it can't do search engine lookup that Google Apps and vlingo can. It does allow you to leverage the Nickname field in your contacts so that you don't have to say an entire name, but just their nickname.
All-in-all, the ability to dial a number not in your contact, and to use the contact's Nickname field makes it slightly better than Melodis, though I have Melodis to be faster in its response from the server.
Say Who is available in a Lite version which is free, and a Pro version.
Say Who is a bit different than Melodis in that Say Who allows you to also look up an address, in addition to voice dialing, by speaking it into the application, and then opening up the iPhone Maps application with that address. It also allows you to select the contact's phone number to SMS them by opening up the iPhone SMS app with their SMS number (note that it does not do voice-to-text dictation). Melodis Dialer performs the above functions (though I accidentally omitted this in my review but has been since updated), Say Who allows you to speak a phone number into the application and will dial that number for you. Sweet!!
Say Who performs the voice recognition in the same manner as Melodis and all other voice dialing apps in that it records your voice lookup, sends the sound file to its servers, performs voice-to-text translation and then attempts to find a best match to your contacts, to an address, or to a set of numbers. All the heavy lifting is done server-side.
I would say that Say Who's competition is an overlap of Melodis Dialer, Google Apps, and vlingo. Not only can it do voice dialing, but address and business lookup, though it can't do search engine lookup that Google Apps and vlingo can. It does allow you to leverage the Nickname field in your contacts so that you don't have to say an entire name, but just their nickname.
All-in-all, the ability to dial a number not in your contact, and to use the contact's Nickname field makes it slightly better than Melodis, though I have Melodis to be faster in its response from the server.
Say Who is available in a Lite version which is free, and a Pro version.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
SelfPortrait
Everyone takes self-portraits with the iPhone. Okay, a lot of people do. Two of the biggest problems with the iPhone for taking self-portraits are that:
1. There's no mirror or screen on the back of the device to see if you've aimed correctly.
2. The shutter release button is not a physical button but a virtual button on the touchscreen on the device so you have to do some guessing as to where to press.
SelfPortrait for the iPhone solves problem #2 somewhat and adds functionality to the iPhone that makes self-portraiture easier. It's a separate Photo application that allows you to set a time delay for a picture to be taken. It allows you to activate the timer, press the shutter release and position the camera appropriately without having to fidget with the shutter release and inadvertently pointing the camera in the wrong place.
SelfPortrait allows you to set the timer anywhere from 1 to 20 seconds, and has a sound feature that produces a clock-ticking sound for each second expired on the self-timer after activation. If you have the sound feature turned off or the iPhone is in silent/vibrate mode, the iPhone will vibrate for each second expired on the self-timer. Pretty smart!
One criticism of the app is that it takes about 6 to 8 seconds for the image to be saved to the Camera Roll Photo Album which is an extraordinary long time to wait for the image to save.
SelfPortrait is a great app for anyone who takes a lot of self-portraits and wants to get it right the first time. It's a simple app that doesn't try to do too much or a Swiss Army knife of imaging features.
1. There's no mirror or screen on the back of the device to see if you've aimed correctly.
2. The shutter release button is not a physical button but a virtual button on the touchscreen on the device so you have to do some guessing as to where to press.
SelfPortrait for the iPhone solves problem #2 somewhat and adds functionality to the iPhone that makes self-portraiture easier. It's a separate Photo application that allows you to set a time delay for a picture to be taken. It allows you to activate the timer, press the shutter release and position the camera appropriately without having to fidget with the shutter release and inadvertently pointing the camera in the wrong place.
SelfPortrait allows you to set the timer anywhere from 1 to 20 seconds, and has a sound feature that produces a clock-ticking sound for each second expired on the self-timer after activation. If you have the sound feature turned off or the iPhone is in silent/vibrate mode, the iPhone will vibrate for each second expired on the self-timer. Pretty smart!
One criticism of the app is that it takes about 6 to 8 seconds for the image to be saved to the Camera Roll Photo Album which is an extraordinary long time to wait for the image to save.
SelfPortrait is a great app for anyone who takes a lot of self-portraits and wants to get it right the first time. It's a simple app that doesn't try to do too much or a Swiss Army knife of imaging features.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Zenbe Lists for iPhone
Zenbe is a list manager that is web-enabled that allows for syncing and sharing of lists. To use Zenbe to synchronize your lists, you have to register on their website but that is a quick and relatively easy process.
The one main thing that we use Zenbe for is for grocery shopping in 2 different ways.
First, Zenbe allows to share lists, which means that if there are 2 people who have Zenbe on their iPhones, 1 of them can share the list with another person via an e-mail invite and that list ends up on the Zenbe iPhone app of the other person. It's a very clean and brilliant process.
Second, now that the list is shared, either user can update the list and their changes will be synchronized each time they start up the Zenbe app, or they can manually sync.
This means that my wife can start creating a shopping list at the beginning of the week and share that list with me. Each of us might think of something to add to the shopping list for the end of the week and we can add things to the list, sync up, and the other person will have an up-to-date list. This also helps prevent us from entering the same item twice now that we are looking at essentially the same list on 2 different devices.
Not only that, when it comes time to go shopping, if we're in a hurry, we might split up tackle the shopping list separately. We can then check off items as we grab them and sync up. That way, each of us won't end up grabbing the same item.
We've found that Zenbe is an essential tool for list-making.
The one main thing that we use Zenbe for is for grocery shopping in 2 different ways.
First, Zenbe allows to share lists, which means that if there are 2 people who have Zenbe on their iPhones, 1 of them can share the list with another person via an e-mail invite and that list ends up on the Zenbe iPhone app of the other person. It's a very clean and brilliant process.
Second, now that the list is shared, either user can update the list and their changes will be synchronized each time they start up the Zenbe app, or they can manually sync.
This means that my wife can start creating a shopping list at the beginning of the week and share that list with me. Each of us might think of something to add to the shopping list for the end of the week and we can add things to the list, sync up, and the other person will have an up-to-date list. This also helps prevent us from entering the same item twice now that we are looking at essentially the same list on 2 different devices.
Not only that, when it comes time to go shopping, if we're in a hurry, we might split up tackle the shopping list separately. We can then check off items as we grab them and sync up. That way, each of us won't end up grabbing the same item.
We've found that Zenbe is an essential tool for list-making.
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