19Dec/060
Mac Apps for the Freelancer
Here is a list of must have applications for freelancers. The right tool for the right job. By order of importance, pretty much.
- Time Equals Money- $49. This Stone Design app is critical. Keep track of your hours for different projects, for multiple clients/projects, calculate earnings based on wages, taxes and equity, and print/email classy invoices to make sure the money makes it all the way to the bank.
- TextMate- 39Euros, whatever that means. The perfect editor? No. Free? Definitly not. But you get out what you put in. Easy to customize the look (it is hard to go back to anything else), and includes a slick engine to create time and keystroke saving tricks (comes standard with hundreds), much much more than simple hotkeys. You have to get through the learning curve, though. Also, greate command line interface, and can remotly(FTP/SFTP) edit files. If you don't want to splurge quite yet, take the lighter weight Textwrangler into consideration (its free). Also great for remote editing. Combine with Fetch or Transmit and Double-click to edit files right on the server.
- Gimp-Short of full on graphics design, GIMP can handle most of your graphics needs. You take a cut on usability, and the newest features, but the price is right. Gimpshop is a nice Photoshop-esque version of the Gimp. Both require X11.
- Developer Toolbar-Great add-on to FireFox, outline div's, view image information, easily validate HTML,CSS, outline current DOM element. Essential.
- Fetch $25. Get a FTP/SFTP client that you can optimize, whether it is double-click to edit, or add bookmarks. It will save you days. Transmit is another option.
- QuickSilver- This nifty os X app lets you spend less time opening apps, and more time using them. Also frees up your screen real-estate since you don't need all those apps in your dock anymore.
- Digital Color Meter - an OS X utility, the fastest get color info I know of. Tip: change the opacity of a layer in a graphics program till it is just the right hue, and then use DCM to get the RGB value.
- Tamper Data- View/edit/generate POST requests
CMS/E-commerce- When you start out, let the pros do the hard work. Once you get that down you can write your own ecommerce engine or whatever, but these are too easy to use to ignore.
- ZenCart-Enough to make you go crazy at times, but once you figure out the template system it is the easiest way to get a shopping cart up and running. Open Source.
- WordPress- Create websites, blogs, and CMS's that clients can actually use. Tons of plugins, so easy to customize, great docs. Open Source.
- Wimpy AV Player- A great way to put streaming music/video on the web. At $40, its a steal. Easy to integrate and even serve from a MySQL database.