Circle Six on Internet Apps
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As part of our ongoing series, here’s another relatively short list of our favorite OS X applications: Internet Edition. Sorry for any overlap, but I figured it would help to keep things organized by subject, and some of these apps just fit under multiple categories or, like Firefox, get special attention.
I just wrote a post on our most essential Firefox plugins, so I won’t digress into further rantings about Firefox at this point. Since we’re talking about OS X, you’ve already got Safari and know full well that it’s a great browser as well.
It took me a while to fall in love with NewsFire. Once I had fiddled with the preferences enough that I actually knew what I was reading and could navigate around with just the keyboard, I could finally sit back and appreciate how beautiful the interface is. My single complaint about NewsFire is its complete lack of scriptability. It has no AppleScript dictionary at all, so interfacing with blogging apps that aren’t included in its default config is difficult.
Free Alternative: Vienna was my previous newsreader of choice. It, in contrast to NewsFire, is extremely scriptable and only lacks a few of the functions of NewsFire. So why did I switch? Ultimately, interface design.
I like Yummy FTP because it can do everything that Transmit can do but took a slightly different path on a few concepts and has a couple extra goodies. It integrates well with any external editor you can imagine and you can define different editors for every possible extension. By default it can open everything in TextMate which is, of course, a selling point for me. However, I was a long-time fan of Transmit and have no problem with it. Transmit probably does have the prettier interface, although I appreciate the elegant starkness of the Yummy interface.
Runners Up: Transmit, Interarchy.
Free Alternative: Cyberduck
JBidWatcher is an excellent, and free, tool for watching all kinds of eBay bids. It allows for sniping (shooting in a bid in the last 15 seconds of bidding) which, regardless of how you feel about the practice, is a good way of winning eBay auctions without unnecessarily inflating the price. It is not pretty, but is regularly updated to handle changes in the eBay API, and I find it an essential tool for searching, organizing and winning eBay auctions. Plus, you can’t beat the price.
Runners Up: AuctionSieve is a useful search tool, taking a little of the pain out of searching for auctions. GarageSale is a nice tool for creating auctions that look a little more professional, and possibly garner a little more trust from the buyer, assuming good content and photos.
Chat Program: Adium
Adium is just a given, in my opinion. Free, fully scriptable and multi-protocol, you can make it as ugly or as beautiful as your personal tastes require. There are a lot of neat tricks you can pull off with Adium, as evidenced by the large collection of applescripts available.
Colloquy is also a standard reference for most Mac users. If you need to use IRC and don’t have a client, pick it up. Other than that, I don’t think I need to say a lot about it.
The Rest of the Best
- ServerSiren
- If you need to keep tabs on a server or three, this little menubar icon can let you know in an instant if something goes down.
- KisMAC
- I won’t tell you about all of the evil things you can do with this program, but it’s great for working on wireless networks.
- Democracy
- A really fun video player with RSS capabilities.
- HamachiX
- Whether you’re working from home or helping Grandma remotely, if you need to set up a VPN, this makes life easy.
One more post left in the series (whew!). 
browsers» Geekery» internet» osx» software» tools»
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