You know what's better that a really really cool program that does some function so well that you can't imaging using your computer without it? A really really cool program that does some function so well that you can't imaging using your computer without it that's FREE.

My source for great indispensable free software is FreeMacWare.Com. It's just another reason to consider landfilling that PC and switching to a MAC. And they are having a contest with great iTunes prizes. All I have to do is write a post about my five favorite pieces of FreeMacWare.

Cabos: A nice clean Gnutella client. I use this primarily to get around the pesky Fair Play DRM in iTunes music. If I want to use a song as part of a podcast, I need to convert it to AIFF in order to use it Garage Band. You can't convert music you bought on te iTunes Music Store. So I download a copy of something I already paid for in a format I can use.

Carbon Copy Cloner: Ever had a hard drive just up and die? Sure you have all your data backed up but you still have to re-install all your software and get everything set up just right all over again. Carbon Copy Cloner does exactly what it says. It makes an exact copy of your system drive. All your preferences all the little invisible system files that wouldn't get copied if you tried to do in manually. Combine Carbon Copy Cloner with a good Back-up system and you'll be ready for almost anything.

Cyber Duck: The best free FTP client I have ever used. In fact it's better than any FTP client I ever paid for. The interface is pure MAC. Slick and easy.

Disctop: This one is basically useless. But it is really cool. If you have a MAC with a slot loading optical drive, like an iMac or a PowerBook, it puts on screen an animated image of the CD or DVD sliding into and out of the drive. Yeah it has a menu that you can use to open or eject the disc but it's mostly just cool when someone is looking over your shoulder and you pop in a disc.

Mail.appetizer: My favorite plug-in for Apple Mail. It puts the header info and a snippet of an incoming mail message in a little floating window. It has buttons to mark a message as read, view the full message in Mail or delete the message. If it had a move to Junk button it would be perfect.

Those are my top five that are listed on FreeMacWare. I do have a few that I like that they haven't listed yet.

IC-Switch: IC-Switch puts an item in the OS X menu bar that lets you edit settings in your Internet Config file. It lets you change your default email, web browser and FTP applications on the fly.

mAC3dec: A neat little app for converting audio file formats. I use it convert MP3s to AIFF so I can use them in Garage Band. (See Cabos above)

Phew: I use this to back up my user folder on the PowerBook to an external Firewire drive. You can specify multiple source folders to back-up to multiple destinations. The current release does not support scheduling but I guess you could write and AppleScript to do that if you really wanted to.

VODcaster: My tool of choice for publishing Podcasts. It creates the XML file that is read by the iTunes music store. It does it quickly and easily. And you don't need to know the first thing about XML files to use it.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment