I like finding free little third party programs that add useful functions to the already great Mac OS.  I download lots of these, but there are only a few that I use on a very regular basis.  (Sorry PC users, these are predominantly Mac-only programs.  But I’m sure there are plenty of PC alternatives for all of these applications.)

iStat Menus: This application allows you to view information for 8 different processes in your computer right in your menu bar.  You can check out the status of your CPU, RAM memory, hard drive space, network connection, internal temperatures, fans and power and bluetooth connection.  It also gives you a great replacement for the default date/time display on the menu bar – when you click on the time, a small calendar pops out.

[update - 8.28.09] – It seems that the latest version of iStat Menus will not work with Mac OS 10.6.  Waiting for update…]

Skitch: I talked about this one in an earlier post.  It allows you to take a picture of anything that is on your computer screen.  It comes with some basic editing tools, or you can open any screen shots taken in any other image editor you wish.  It’s more useful than you might think.

Caffeine: Have you ever been watching a video on Hulu or YouTube and your Mac’s screen keeps dimming to save power because it thinks its idle?  Each time it does this, you are forced to jiggle the mouse or touch the track pad to brighten the screen again.  Annoying, right?  Well Caffeine puts a little icon on your menu bar that, when turned on, overrides your computer’s desire to dim the screen.

You Control: iTunes: This is a free utility that gives you complete control over iTunes from the menu bar.  This highly customizable app gives you access to iTunes controls; it displays the current track, artist and album when the track changes; and you can navigate your entire music library from the menu bar button so don’t have to open iTunes nearly as often.

Notify: This little program works just like the Google Notifier, but better.  It keeps track of what’s in your Gmail inbox, displays Growl (see next program) notifications when new mail arrives, has a great interface, and supports multiple accounts.  The big reason why I switched to this program from Google Notifier was that it can check for new messages every minute – GN will only check every 15 minutes.  I also never used GN’s Google calendar notifier feature, but if you do, you can just turn on the calendar notifier and run Notify along with Google Notifier.

Growl: This has been around for a long time, and is a must-have app for Mac owners.  It allows many Mac applications to give you small messages that pop up on your screen when new actions occur in them or new information about them is available.  Once installed, applications that use the program will automatically detect Growl and will begin giving you messages when needed.  All notification settings for each application are highly customizable from the Growl Systems Preferences control panel.

Cooliris: This is a plugin for Sarari 3 & 4 and Firefox that displays pictures and/or videos from websites on a really cool 3d wall within your browser.  It simply gives you a much faster and more interesting viewing experience when you are searching the web for pictures or videos.  Definitely check it out and give it a whirl.

Handbrake: Like ripping DVDs onto your hard drive?  You need this free program.  Its a robust application for converting DVD video into many different computer-friendly video file types.

Hulu Desktop: This application was created by the Hulu folks for making Hulu video even more watchable.  This very slick application can be controlled with the Apple remote, and will make you never want to go back to watching Hulu at Hulu.com again.

Tweetie: This is a slick little Twitter application that is the sidekick to the popular iPhone app with the same name.  There are lots of applications out there to control your Twitter account(s), but I am really comfortable with this one.

MacJanitor: There are a number of “cleaning” functions that your Mac does throughout its day that boosts its performance and clears out unneeded data that can bog down its system.  However, because some of these functions are scheduled to begin late at night, if you shut down your Mac every night they run very rarely.  MacJanitor allows you to start any of these process anytime you want.

Evernote: I devoted an entire post to this one a few weeks ago.  Check it out.

And if this list isn’t good enough for you, check out IUseThis.com – a site where people can submit and vote on Mac applications.  I check there regularly to see what applications people are using.

Related posts:

1. It’s really* easy to replace your TV with your computer!

As high quality, reliable video becomes more ubiquitous on the Internet due to faster broadband, more sophisticated web development, and better cooperation from content providers, ditching the cable subscription has become a more attractive option to folks.  It was shortly after I signed up for Netflix DVD rentals, video content became available on the iTunes Store, and I discovered the joys of bit torrent files that I decided that my laptop could satisfy all my television needs.  Comcast was another motivating factor because they started raising my bill for no apparent reason and I probably only watched 2% of all the content I was paying a lot of money for anyway.  The rise of streaming video services like Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly, and Amazon Video On Demand has further cemented myself into a life of picking and choosing what I watch and when I watch it.

This kind of life is not for everyone…yet.

1. All of the ways to get video from your computer listed above require the user to learn how to find and use them.  The learning curves for these vary, and I discuss this below.
2. This kind of video content viewing is very individualistic.  I use MY laptop to watch, control and download MY video content from MY various online sources and accounts.  This is not a handy setup for families or one-computer households.  The television still beats the computer in providing programming that is easily accessible and quickly viewable to a large number of people in the same room.
3. And even if you can work out a plan to reliably get all the video content the household wants to watch onto this one computer, getting the stuff onto on a large screen for an audience is still kind of a pain.  This is also addressed below.
4. While you can read about live events as they happen via Twitter, RSS feeds, live blogging, etc, watching live events online is still pretty rare.  As it stands now, I can’t host a Superbowl party :-(

But for me and an increasing number of people, the cheapness and flexibility of Internet/Netflix-only TV-watching far outweighs the above problems.

Here are some sites you can go to find almost any video content you desire

Streaming Video (mostly free, easy to use, and legal): Here’s a pretty exhaustive list of sites where you can find streaming video, both paid and free.  My favorite free streaming sites with lots of good general content are hulu.com, sidereel.com, and Netflix‘s Watch Instantly service.

Video Download Stores (not free, but relatively cheap, easy to use, and legal):  iTunes is my favorite place to purchase downloadable video content.  Amazon On Demand service is also good.  Here’s a blog post that compares 11 popular services.

Bittorrents (kinda difficult to set up at first, free and illegal)

Once you figure out how to use bittorents, you will have quick and easy access to an extremely vast amount of video (and other types of media) content. The technology behind these things make download times really fast, and also make it almost impossible for content providers to stop people from uploading copyrighted material!  There are a lot of places to go to learn about these things, but the quickest way to learn how to use them is to watch this two minute YouTube video.  A couple notes:

• It recommends downloading the bit torrent client provided by bittorrent.com.  As a Mac guy, I happen to really like Transmission (Mac only).  There are lots of them out there, and they all work pretty well.
• There are also lots of places to find files to download with your client.  I usually go between piratebay.org and mininova.org.  Here’s a good list of these.

Once the bittorrent client is downloaded and set up (usually really easy) and you have found a few good places to find torrents for your client to open and download, attaining just about any video is a snap.

Here are some ways you can get Internet video (both streamed and downloaded) to play on your TV from your computer

Internet Set-Top Boxes (expensive, usually easy to use and set up, all with different functions and content): Here is a good list of devices that wirelessly stream video content from your computer to your television and allow you to navigate their content via remote control.  My favorites from this list are the Apple TV – which allows you to watch your purchased iTunes content on your TV – and the Ruko Player – which currently allows you to watch Amazon VOD, Netflix Watch Instantly, and MLB.com content on your TV.  I’m afraid to buy any one set-top box because they are all still pretty expensive and I am not confident that any one will definitely play ALL the video content that can play on my computer.  Therefore I do the next option.

Computer to TV connection (inexpensive, harder to set up, usually creates a mess of wires, but is guaranteed to work with anything that plays on your computer): Because TVs and computers all have different inputs and outputs, it can get confusing figuring out what kind of connection you will need.  Check out this extremely corny but good video for a tutorial.  I have one issue with this video, however: It makes it seem like MacBooks only have VGA output, which is not true.  I connect my Mac to my TV using this Mini-DVI to Video Adapter.  It allows me to view my MacBook display on my TV via S-video or RCA.

*ok, it’s not really easy, but it’s worth it because cable sucks.

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