Adium

I have both AIM and MSN Messenger accounts. If I want to talk to some of my AIM friends and my MSN friends at the same time, I have to have both programs open, which can take up a lot of valuable desktop space. Then I discovered Adium, a IRC program that integrates all of your instant messenging programs (including AIM, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, Yahoo, and more) into a solitary contacts list.

Audacity

If you are like me, you have some songs in your iTunes library that aren’t exactly right. The problems with some of my songs ranged from a large amount of silence at the end to annoying recordings of people talking after the song was over. Along came Audacity, which allowed me to edit these songs to my liking. Audacity is an easy to learn program that can record live audio (allowing you to make podcasts), edit music, and convert it to MP3 or WAV format. My only complaint is that you have to download another program in order to save the recording as MP3 (due to copyright laws), but you can just save the file as WAV and when it is imported, iTunes will convert it to MP3.

Cabos

Cabos is a filesharing program that uses the Gnutella network (same as Limewire). The difference is that Cabos is always free and doesn’t beg you to buy the “better” version like Limewire and Acquisition do. It is a very lightweight program, has a great UI, and is easy to use.

Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X is a disk usage utility. It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called “treemaps” (see screenshot below). If you’ve ever wondered where all your disk space has gone, Disk Inventory X will help you to answer this question. This program helped me realize that some movies that I forgot to transfer to my external HD were the culprits that were using most of my space….problem solved.

GimmeSomeTune

While I do not use this program’s main feature of a window that pops up showing you the current song that is playing (see next program), I do thoroughly enjoy the hotkey feature, which lets me switch tracks in iTunes no matter what program I am in at the time.

Growl

Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. Many applications have their own notification system, but you can use Growl to notify you about what other applications are doing, so I choose to use to on all of my applications. Growl notifications include what song I am listening to, friends signing on and off Adium, messages recieved, downloads complete, websites blocked, etc.

MacTheRipper

MacTheRipper is a DVD ripper (extractor). It removes CSS encryption, Macrovision protection, sets the disc’s region to ’0′ for region-free, and is capable of removing RCE region checking. It can also copy ARccOS copy-protected DVDs. This is to backup your legally-purchased DVDs onto your hard drive.

NetNewsWire Lite

NetNewsWire Lite is an easy-to-use RSS and Atom newsreader for Mac OS X. Its familiar three-paned interface — similar to Apple Mail — can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news.

Sidenote

Sidenote tries to catch the “Stickies” spirit but in the form of a multi-document drawer that will hide in the corner of your screen (left or right). You can use it to take all your daily notes, include images and easily modify text color and font. Sidenote will automatically expand so that you will be able to drag into it any picture, text clipping or pdf file from the finder or your favorite application. Sporting notes auto-saving, you’ll never have to save your notes. Sidenote will handle that for you. You can also print them or export them to rtf.

Transmission

Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify.

These days, bandwidth is a precious commodity. Transmission allows you to ration this commodity efficiently. You might want to queue your torrents for maximum performance. Or throttle their speed during peak periods. Transmission easily lets you do both, and more.

VirtueDesktops

VirtueDesktops is a virtual desktop manager for Apple’s Mac OS. It offers features, eye candy, and configurable options that no other desktop manager on the Mac has added yet, and is under active development. As of right now, I am using six different desktops. This program is really handy if you have a small monitor and need to have a lot of programs open at the same time. The developer has stopped working on this application since the announcement of Spaces included with the release of Leopard.