4 January 2009

This is kind of dumb, but I won’t hesitate to admit that I’m a bit of a software nerd. My eyes and ears are always open for new apps to evaluate; almost always having some trial app installed. Sometimes I’ll reset my trials after a few months of the first try, because I wasn’t sure I understood the app correctly.

Some software I just can’t seem to enjoy or reap benefit from. I don’t mean to disuade anyone from trying out software for themselves, but a few examples of software that fail for me are: Billings, anything from IGG Software or Jumsoft, MoneyWell, anything from OmniGroup other than OmniWeb, feed readers other than NewsFire. There are plenty more. Most of these apps have good ideas behind them, but they either fail in their UI details, are too complicated, or otherwise don’t feel right. And so I end up walking away from them. (If you’d like for me to elaborate on why any of these apps fail for me, let me know.)

Some people are okay with (or expect) a learning curve with new software, perhaps the type who sit in tutorial meetings to learn how to use MS Office or their big new complicated web CMS. I am not one of these. Maybe I’m too impatient. Generally, though, if I can’t understand how to use an application or quickly see the benefit of trying to learn it, I won’t bother with it. On the flip side, if it makes sense and I see it as a worthwhile time investment, I will make a financial trade to license the software.

So, here are a few apps that I’ve been using lately. Some I have purchased, and some I am still trying.

1Password & Awaken

A friend gave me a license for 1Password for Thanksgiving and I’ve quickly grown into this app. It’s really great, actually. It keeps all my web passwords in a vault with one password accessing all. It’ll generate the craziest jibberish passwords for you to really keep things secure on the front end, which I use especially for web databases and such. Some of its browser UI integration could be better, I think. For example, it integrates with Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc, by putting a ‘1P’ button in the navigation bar. I’d rather have a top-level app menu instead (like Delicious Safari). I really don’t like having extra buttons all over my browser. Picky, I know.

Awaken is a really simple application that, for me, rivaled Chimp Software’s iRooster. Every time we’d go visit my parents, I’d download the iRooster trial so I’d have an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. After several times doing this, I decided to look into buying it. My usual routine is to do a Google search for “appname vs” to see what else is out there, and in doing so I came across Embraceware’s Awaken. I bought it immediately after downloading it, and have been really satisfied with it since. It had a few more features, interface polish, and regular development behind it than iRooster seemed to have. Just now my wife said, “Set your timer thing for 20 minutes.” She’s baking something. It works great as an alarm clock, too. Set it for whatever time in the morning, put your computer to sleep, and it’ll wake up you and your computer with whatever you want (some nice sound files that come with it, anything in iTunes, or any document).

JungleDisk & Things

JungleDisk has been a lifesaver. Before I first started using this, I had tried Mozy, but I was never able to get through a backup without it failing (by now that’s a bug surely fixed). So, at the recommendation of a friend, I tried JungleDisk. Its interface is nothing special, but it has worked without fail, making it really simple to backup my whole dang computer to Amazon’s S3 servers. Just the other day I messed up the database for a commerce site I was working on, and the only backup I had was through JungleDisk. Phew! Ultimately, I chose offsite/remote backups (as opposed to using something like Time Machine for local backups) because it’s inexpensive and I can always retrieve a backup if my own hardware breaks, is stolen, catches fire, or anything else. I don’t have to worry about losing my data.

There are some things that I like about Cultured Code’s Things and some things I’m not too sure about. I really, really like this application. This is one I have yet to purchase. I have tried it off and on since it’s been in public beta. As of this writing, it just moved to 1.0 Release Candidate 3. What makes me hesitant to buy it is its underlying GTD workflow. GTD works for a lot of folks, as far as I have read, but it’s one of those things that takes way too much time to make it work (for someone like me, anyway) for it to be of real value. But, that said, the GTD workflow in Things isn’t demanding at all. I’ve been able to dump stuff in there in the manner I structure my own thinking, and it works. So, I might end up buying this app. I get the impression, though, that it’d be way more useful or cool if I had the iPhone companion app. I don’t, however, have an iPhone.

FontCase & LittleSnapper

I’ve been testing the new Fontcase app from Bohemian Coding. Since the beta testing started, they’ve delivered a lot of quick updates and improvements. This is fast becoming a really impressive little font management app that you’ll probably want to have. It makes looking at your fonts really fun and exciting. Really. I’ve been using Linotype’s FontExplorer X since it first came out, and it has worked just fine. What intrigues me about Fontcase, mostly, is it’s slick interface, but also that its interface is simple and doesn’t have stuff in it that I wouldn’t use (like FontExplorer’s built in Linotype store).

I learned about LittleSnapper just the other day from one of those 24 ways articles. Tim Van Damme correctly recommended avoiding those pointless (by now) CSS galleries and dumping stuff you find in LittleSnapper. So, I downloaded it. I tried it. I love it. This is a really great way to archive website designs I come across. It’s like a less-capable iPhoto for websites. But — it costs $39! That is expensive. Expensive enough to make me have to think about it for a while. Plus, I have Yojimbo, which, now that I think about it, actually makes better archives than LittleSnapper does — usable, html archives, as opposed to flat PNGs. The LittleSnapper interface is just way cool, that’s all. I’ll probably start using Yojimbo a little more, though.