Great Software/Services

Stuff I Use Every Day That Just Works

No explanation needed here, just stuff that I use every day that works and works well.

Services

Online Backup Service BackBlaze

I’ve tried and stopped four different online backup services until I came across BackBlaze. BackBlaze just works, I’ve had no negative issues. Download it, setup a few preferences and forget about it. I think everybody should have multiple backups of there stuff. I backup at home with SuperDuper but it’s wise to have an off-site backup in case of theft or fire. How much are your pictures worth? How much do you have invested in your iTunes library? BACK IT ALL UP! BackBlaze works great period. (*full disclosure If you sign up from my links above, I do get a few bucks)

ScreenCastsOnline by Don McAllister

Here’s the bottom line…. ScreenCastsOnline Rocks! if you want to learn all about your Mac and very cool software subscribe to Don’s ScreenCasts, Don has an incredible talent for teaching, does it with a great voice, and presents it with class. Nothing cheesy or obnoxious here, just great information presented very professionally. Don does work for many companies, you can see his work over at the video training tutorials for Pixalmator or TextExpander.

Evernote Online Storage of Everything!

Been using Evernote for several months now and can’t say enough good things about it. It’s a place to keep everything that you need and you have access to it from your computer, the web, or your iPhone. Pictures, voice notes, tweets, screen captures, scribbles, send them all to Evernote and keep them organized and searchable and never lose them again. Tons of practical uses for Evernote, check them out and see what Evernote can do for your world!

Software

BBEdit Text Editor
Great product full of simple and advanced features. I use the built in FTP service all the time. Does a little bit of everything, worth the look!

TextMate Text Editor
Another great text editor with a clean simple approach built for the mac has different features than BBEdit you need to try both and pick the one that works for you. I currently use both.

ExpanDrive FTP and SFTP
ExpanDrive for both Mac and Windows has worked really well for me, while I use the built-in FTP included in BBEdit there are lots of times you need a dedicated simple to use FTP program and ExpanDrive fits the bill, I love it.
Here’s a quick video by JW from In the Woods how he uses ExpanDrive with TextMate.

TextExpander by Smile On My Mac
If you type much, letter, blogs, code, emails, doesn’t matter, you’ll love TextExpander you can use built in snippets to auto-correct spelling or shorten you HTML or CSS. Make your own custom snippets for things you type out all the time. It is an incredible time saver after usng it for several weeks now I don’t know how I got along without it. One place that I’ve been using TextExpander a lot is within BBEdit for HTML and CSS snippets.

Pixelmator Image Editing and More!


Pixelmator will blow your doors off! It was built exclusively for Mac OS X and it’s called the image editor for the rest of us. Lets face it Photoshop is expensive. I have Photoshop and I think you should too, but if you can’t afford it right now buy Pixelmator heck even if you own Photoshop I still think you should buy it. It’s a beautiful, well laid out piece of software with incredible usability. It’s 59 bucks and you can find 10 percent off coupons online. It’s fun, and getting better and better, they just released version 1.5. Here is a great page of tutorials to get you started Abduzeedo Pixelmator Tuts.