Here is a list of ten apps I use on a daily basis (both web and desktop apps). The main system I’ve been using for a while is a unibody MacBook, so many of the applications on the list are mac-only.

Mint

Mint is a site-stats program that promises to give a “fresh look” at your site. Many of you are probably familiar with mint. I use it a lot for tracking visitor habits and to see stats from this blog. I’ve installed lot of peppers, which add extra functionality  like Secret Crush, User Agent, Feedburner and Visits Differ. Be aware that more peppers means more javascript code loading when someone visits your site, which leads to slower page loading. Mint costs $30 (no subscription or year-by-year costs). All updates until the next major version (which will be version 3) are free as long as most of the available peppers (about 90% of them). Keep in mind that mint is self-hosted, which means that after you buy it, you have to install it on your hosting server.

Safari

I’ve been using only Firefox for almost three years now, but recently switched to Safari, which seems to run faster on my MacBook. Safari lacks the extensibility of Firefox, but its clean layout alongside with fast page loading are huge pros. The only thing I miss is Google Toolbar which is not available for Safari. Plus I am now used to Safari bookmark management and it will be a hard time for me to make a switch again.

WordPress

WordPress is probably the best piece of software I’ve ever came around. Free, 0pen-source, bringing tons of new features with every major release. I use it on a daily basis for managing this blog, update plugins, read comments and clean spam. I’ve tried some time in the past to use other software for blogging, but it lasted only for about two days. After using WordPress for about two years, I feel very familiar with it, and I cannot even imagine my online life without it.

iTunes

iTunes has become my main music player. I love the options it offers for organizing music. Most of my albums have full ID3 tags including cover arts and genres. I use iTunes also for managing movie trailers, movies and for syncing my iPhone and my iPod.  What I love in the last version of iTunes (version 8 ) is the grid option which is the way I usually use to navigate through my library.

Things

Before Things I’ve never used a GTD application. I’ve read lot of reviews on Things application after the recent Macworld 2009 expo, so I decided to give it a try. Things is the best to-do management application out there. I downloaded the trial version (which lets you use the app with full functionality for 15 days) and I bought a license just after 4 days of trial use. I am so excited with the features of this app, that I will write a separate post reviewing the app alongside with its companion product for the iPhone.

Transmit

Transmit is an ftp client by Panic. It offers great capabilities and is the only ftp program I use for managing the files of this blog. Transmit offers drag and drop interface which makes file exchange between your mac and your server a piece of cake. It supports ftp and sftp and integrates well with Panic Coda, the well known editor.

Coda

Coda is a text editor by Panic. Although it is called a text editor it offers much more like terminal, svn capabilities, css, even books and in general everything that a web developer needs.  I use it for editing the php files of the blogs, manage css files (I use also CSS edit for this purpose) and of course for html editing. When I need to edit a file on Typpz’s server, I find the file using Transmit ftp click, ctrl+click>edit with Coda, and after editing cmd+s to save it directly on the server. Coda costs $99 and worths every penny. I find it better and much more easy to use than Adobe Dreamweaver which costs much more. Both Coda and Transmit are mac-only apps.

Xcode

Xcode comes built-in in every Mac. It is a great IDE. I use it on a daily basis for practicing with the iPhone SDK. I also use it as a simple text-editor for java and c programs I write for my studies. I write the programs in Xcode and I prefer to compile them using the Terminal. In general Xcode and the other development programs that come with every Mac, offer everything you need for developing applications for Mac OS X using cocoa, java and objective-c.

iPhoto

I use to snap large amounts of photos each day with my camera. Right when I am back home I plug my camera to my mac and import them to iPhoto. iPhoto offers exactly what I need and use: tagging, album creation and most important it is easy to use. For professional users there are also Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom.

Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop needs for sure no introduction. I use it daily for editing images for this blog, editing my photos and for designing layouts for web sites I design. 

Next to come is a post about apps I use on a daily basis on my iPhone.

Recently I bought a Sony Vaio laptop that runs Microsoft Windows Vista. When I try to open the Vista sidebar I get an error window saying that “Windows Sidebar is managed by your system administrator”. Even when I tried to run the sidebar.exe (that launches the sidebar) as administrator, I was still getting the same error message. Googling around, I found the fix, which is very simple and requires basic skills of registry editing.

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe in the search field and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following path:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar
   

3. In the right-pane, delete the value named TurnOffSidebar
4. Repeat the same in the following path (if there is a sidebar value there):

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar

5. Exit Registry Editor

Finally Windows Vista sidebar is up and running as it should from the very beginning!

Microsoft Mobile Memory 8000 mouse is a pointing device designed for notebook users (I purchased it for my notebook as I dislike touchpads ). This mouse features also 1GB flash memory, which can be used as a usual portable flash drive. Apart from this, this device features a rechargeable NiMh battery, so you do not need to carry extra batteries.

As you see on the image above, the pack contains the pointing device, the reciever which is also a 1GB usb flash drive, a magnetic cable which is used for charging your battery, a case for carrying the mouse and a poor leaflet with instructions on how to install the mouse alongside with the IntelliPoint driver cd.

Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 can be connected to your notebook via Bluetooth if your notebook supports it. If you choose to connect it via bluetooth, you do not have to plug the transceiver, so you have one more free usb port on your notebook. Changing interface between 2.4Ghz and bluetooth can be easily done via a button on mouse’s bottom. A button for turning the device on and off is also located there.

Charging the mouse is really easy. There is a led light near the tilt wheel: if the led glows red, it needs to be charged. You have to plug the magnetic cable to the transceiver and to the mouse. When the cable is connected, the indicator light becomes green and solid green when its fully charged (needs up to 5 hours for a full charge). You can continue using the mouse while it is charging, but the computer must not be on hibernate mode or turned off.

Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 uses laser technology. The pointer is accurate enough and well responsive. IntelliPoint software lets you customise buttons’ behaviour and point speed. If you would like to use the mouse under Windows Vista and want the tilt wheel to support Flip 3D function, you have to update IntelliPoint to version 6.2 (the mouse is shipped with version 6.1). Tilt wheel features 4-way scrolling and there are also two customisable buttons on the right which by default are used as “back button” and magnifier.

The device’s design is great. Touch feeling is nice, solid and very ergonomical even for people with big hands. Although the mouse is small and lightweight, so it can be carried easily using the included carrying case. The transceiver is bigger than many others in the market, but is as big as a usual usb flash drive.

Overall
Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 is an elegant device, with nice design, easy-to-carry which features also 1GB flash memory built in the transceiver. To pros should be considered that it can be charged straight from notebook by connecting the transceiver with the mouse via the magnetic cable without stopping working or having to change battery every so. Its package should be considered full, although its price is high (€ 98 here in Greece).

I visited today the digital technology expo (called dte) that takes place in Athens, Greece from 8-11 November. There were many IT companies stands including Microsoft, Cisco, HTC, EA, Google and LG alongside with some famous greek companies like Otenet and OTE. Although there were many absenses from large resselers like Apple product resselers, Sony resselers etc. Management was pretty good, but I would like to see more cutting edge technology stuff and not only products that are already shipped in the market.

Microsoft had the largest stand, giving out Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition packs, Visual C# 2008 beta cds and presenting the concept of digital home using Windows Home Server system. Xboxes were there too of course. HTC stand was large too, full of the latest palmtops and pdas, providing the ability of real time testing. Google stand was mainly about enterprise stuff like Google Mini and Adwords. The LG stand focused on notebooks and the company’s latest displays (the design of the new LGs is amazing) alongside with LCD tvs playing 1080p High-Definition video via a player that supports both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. Cisco featured some of the latest network switches and routers for large networks. Below you can see some photos from the exhibition. Images are also available in my Flickr account.

It is time to tell you something about what we use to create our products (like the cards from our Pet Shop Cards collection above). Our equipment consists of:

• Two Dell workstations powered with Intel Pentium D 3Ghz processors, 2GB RAM, running Windows XP Pro
• One Intel Core 2 Duo MacPro running Mac OS X with 8GB RAM
• One workstation equiped with a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor and 2GB of RAM running Windows XP Pro
• One G3 Mac with 512RAM running MacOS 8.1
• Our server which features a Pentium 4 processor, 2GB RAM, running SuSe Linux 10.2
• 2TB of total storage (multiple internal and external hard drives plugged to our systems).
• For printing we use an Epson Stylus Photo 800 inkjet printer, an HP Laserjet Plus laser printer, a Roland HifiJet 52 for quality CMYK printing (we use Light Magenta and Light Cyan colors as extra colors instead of the Orange and Green which are plotter’s selection). For digital printing, we use Xante Illumina.
• For scanning we use a Linotype Hell Topaz scanner, driven by Linocolor Software, running on the G3 Mac.
• For photocopier we use an Infotec which prints on any type of paper (A4, B3, A3 etc).
• All of our stuff is connected to an 100Mbit LAN via a 3com router and to the broadband Internet (we use a 2Mbit connection) via a Speedtouch 585.
• We also own a Wacom Intuos3 A4 Tablet.
• Our workstations have Eizo ColorEdge CE210W displays.
• For monitor callibration we use Pantone Huey.
• For color control we use Pantone Color Que 2.
• The software we run mainly is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, Quark Xpress, Adobe Acrobat and since January Adobe Indesign.