FreeMacWare I love

Over at FreeMacWare.com, they are running a contest so that I can "let the world know about all the great Mac Freeware that [I] use." FreeMacWare is a great site, and I would highly recommend that any Apple enthusiast or recent switcher bookmark the site, or even better, subscribe to the RSS feed. Of course, most of the readers of STA (and I know you are legion, even if you are discrete) are already Mac aficionados, but if you are a Mac-curious newcomer, then maybe this post will bring you over to the good side.

The contest stipulates that I write an entry on my blog about my five favourite posts on FMW (in other words, the five freeware apps for Mac that I like the most). Let me tell you, it was not an easy job to whittle it down to five. Indeed, I could have easily posted 10 freeware apps that I use on a daily or weekly basis. But if whittle I must, then here are my five favourites:

1. Without a doubt, Quicksilver is the single most useful piece of software on my Mac (not counting the OS, of course). The beautiful thing about QS is that, like a great piece of literature, the more you delve into it, the more astounded you become. In fact, I think I might like QuickSilver more than Mac OS X. It's that good.
   
   
2. Adium. A wonderful multi-protocol chat client. It's easy to set up, wonderfully customizable and supports pretty much every protocol out there, including jabber. File transfers can be a problem, and it doesn't yet support audio or video, but it's a lean, mean chatting machine, and it's my main chat client.
   
   
3. Mail.appetizer. This little mail plug-in does wonders for my productivity. When mail arrives, a preview window pops up that gives you various options of replying, dismissing, deleting and so forth. The great thing is that you can specify which mailboxes you want notification for, which I'm sure Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders fame, would love. In conjunction with Mail.app rules, I have set it up so that only mail from my clients interrupts my work.
   
   
4. FlickrExport. Now that I own a digital camera, I frequently post photos to my Flickr site. And the easiest way by far is using this iPhoto plugin. It just works. Is there anything else to say?
   
   
5. And last, but not least, iBackup. This is an easy-to-use backup app. I use it every week.

• Honourable mention: As I said, I could have mentioned 10 apps, but at least one other deserves mention. Textpander is a great little app that allows you to program keyboard shortcuts for frequently used sequences of letters or words. I find it especially useful for HTML tags and e-mail.

There you have it. I'm sure others will have their own favourites, but these are mine, at least until FreeMacWare tells me about some other indispensable free Mac app. Ahh... the joys of being a Mac user.

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