Vanlige utvidelser

Adblock

Reklameblokkering. Funker greit uten at du må konfigurere deg ihjel.

Applet2Object

Chrome liker ikke applet-taggen så bra, så en del nettsider som bruker denne gamle, utdaterte og ugyldige taggen (f.eks mange norske nettbanker) funker ikke uten denne utvidelsen.

Bookmark tree

Gir deg en popup-meny med dine bokmerker (eller en spesifikk undermappe). Jeg bruker denne for å ha mine mest brukt bookmarklets kjapt tilgjengelig.

Chrome Nanny

Blokkerer nettsteder (du velger selv) til tidspunkt (du velger selv). Jepp, jeg har denne installert på jobbmaskinen min. Du kan lett omgå den, men den funker faktisk greit likevel.

Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer

Åpner Office-dokumenter i Google Docs så du slipper å laste dem ned. Tar også PDF-dokumenter, men det synes jeg den innebygde PDF-leseren i Chrome gjør bedre. :)

Prowl

Lar meg sende adressen til siden jeg er på til iPhone-applikasjonen med samme navn med et museklikk.

TinEye Reverse Image Search

Lar deg sende bilder til TinEye. TinEye er en tjeneste som søker etter lignende bilder. Veldig kjekt når man ønsker seg en større versjon av et bilde.

RSS abonnement

Gir deg automatisk RSS-abonnering fra adresselinjen, slik som i alle andre nettlesere. :)

Web Developer

Masse verktøy for webutviklere. For de som har brukt Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox, er denne laget av samme utvikler og har derfor samme funksjonalitet.

Userscript

Det store bildet

Lar deg klikke på profilbildene på Underskog for å se dem i orginal-størrelse.

FFixer

Haugevis med ekstrafunksjonalitet / konfigurasjon av Facebook. Få forhåndsvisning av bilder, rydd bort ting du ikke liker osv…

Stop iTunes

Hindrer linker til iTunes store fra å åpne iTunes automatisk.

YouTube Video Download

Gir deg download-knapp på alle YouTube-videoer. Utrolig elegant gjennomført.

Flick Link Original Images 2

Gir tilgang til orginalbilder på Flickr.

LMGTFY.com link on Google search result

Gjør som den sier. Alle resultatsider hos Google får en link øverst til samme resultat på lmgtfy.com.

Oppdatert: 8. oktober.

Derfor er det vemodig når jeg nå har kommet frem til at jeg må forlate Twitter.

I begynnelsen av min Twitter-karriere var det følelsen av et fagmiljø som tiltrakk meg. Jeg fulgte folk med samme interesser, og vi diskuterte faglige ting. Jeg følte at kvaliteten på informasjonen som fløt var minst like god som den jeg før fikk ved å lese blogger rundt omkring på nettet. Derfor valgte jeg Twitter.

Nå, på slutten av min Twitter-karriere føler jeg at Twitter er fullt av pludring om filmer, spill, nyheter, hverdagsobservasjoner , «morsomme linker» og kjendisspotting. Den eneste funksjonen jeg ser at Twitter kan ha for meg personlig er nettverksbygging, men det blir uansett for globalt til at jeg føler det er matnyttig nok for meg.

Måten jeg bruker Twitter på er at jeg leser absolutt alt som sies av de jeg følger. Har jeg vært offline en dag blar jeg meg helt tilbake til der jeg var sist, og leser meg ajour. For å klare dette følger jeg veldig få, og går stadig gjennom listen min og fjerner folk jeg ikke synes er relevante nok. Derfor har jeg også nesten dobbel så mange followers enn hva jeg følger selv. Jeg har aldri vært kjent for moderasjon, og det gjenspeiles nok i min Twitter-bruk. For en informasjonsjunkie blir det fort alt eller ingenting…

Jeg har en utfordring til deg: Åpne opp din egen Twitter-strøm akkurat nå. Se nedover første side. Finner du noe der du virkelig hadde savnet om du ikke hadde vært på Twitter i dag? Hadde noe der tilført deg noe du ellers hadde gått glipp av? Og ikke klart å finne på Facebook, Digg.com eller Reddit?

Forhåpentligvis får jeg brukt tiden andre plasser fremover. Jeg håper på litt mer tid på denne bloggen, men også mer tid på ymse programmeringsprosjekter som aldri har kommet lenger enn planleggingsstadiet.

Men jeg blir ikke å slette meg fra Twitter. Jeg vil få (og svare) DM og mentions fordi jeg får epostvarsel på dem, men den daglige lesingen er altså over for min del. Noen få utvalgte legger jeg inn i Google Reader.

Den første er artikkelen Apple dropper musa. Kan noen fortelle meg hva i alle dager den overskriften skal bety? I artikkelen finner jeg formuleringen "Styreflaten erstatter musen på bærbare datamaskiner, og nå er den tilsynelatende helt knappeløs". Kjære journalist… "Styreflater" er en oppfinnelse som er over 25 år gammel, og Apple har brukt den i over 15 år. Hvordan fikk journalisten manglende knapper til å bli at musa ble droppet? Må man ha mus når man bruker touchpad med knapper? Jeg er mildt sagt forvirret…

Så kommer vi til en annen artikkel av samme journalist… Rask nettleser for vågale brukere hvor man ikke engang har skjønt hva man skriver om! Der presenteres trunk-utgaven av Firefox som en separat lillebror av Firefox med navnet "Minefield". Dette er ikke annet enn en testversjon av kommende Firefox, det er bare ikke en "utgivelse" i vanlig forstand, men snarere enn kopi av det Firefox-teamet har akkurat her og nå. Artikkelen er riktignok noe redigert siden første publisering.

Hvis det ikke var for hennes sidebar kalt «Andres gullkorn». Tusen takk, Lin. Nå sitter jeg på jobb med fuktige øyne og klump i halsen! Hvis noen lurer var nemlig gullkornene fantastisk bra, faktisk så bra at jeg tillater meg å videreformidle dem:

• Complete Healing hos Inagh og gutta
• Forlot gråtende kvinne på perrongen hos Bussbloggen (bloggen er tatt ned)
• Noen opplevelser gjør noe med deg hos Svein Øverland
• Tenkepause i Mitt egosentriske hjørne

Les og nyt!

En fin ting med dette er at jeg la Twitter til steder å sende oppdatering til slik at jeg kunne legge til en Twitter Badge her i bloggen. Vips, enda mindre personvern! :p Ja, man må nok huske på alle steder statusen blir postet så man ikke skriver noe man helst ikke skulle gjort… Du vet sånn cirka hvem som ser MSN-statusen din, men står den på bloggen din risikerer du at den caches ute på det store internettet for all fremtid.

As those who know me might know, I love researching stuff on the net. In addition to that, I’ve also got a personal policy of always using freeware when it does the job – my own way of avoiding pirated software. It also helps freeware authors get a nice user mass, so I can’t say I feel sorry for NOT buying commercial alternatives.

So one of the first things I did (actually before I received my black new-model MacBook with 2GB ram) was researching for apps I needed. And now, after actually testing them I figured I might publish my findings, so others could benefit from it as well. :) So here it is, my list of Mac OS X «must have» freewares:

0xED

There comes a time in every man’s life where he needs a hex editor. This is it, ’nuff said.

Adium

When first arriving from Windows, a Jabber transport (in iChat) was the only way to view your MSN contacts statusmessages. But since then, Adium (and libpidgin) has received proper MSN protocol support. And this IM is so smooth, it’ll make you go «aaahhhh» every time you start it.

Angry IP Scanner

A graphical IP scanner is nice to have. This is the best one I’ve found so far, but it seems abandoned (1 year since last beta).

AppleJack

AppleJack is a small rescue script, meant to be used from single-user mode. It can do a number of maintenance tasks and rescue operations. I have been able to repair filesystem inconsistencies, which Apples normal Disk utility couldn’t fix and I wasn’t even able to boot my Mac. So install it before it’s too late. Once installed, you will be reminded of its usage every time you login in single-user mode (command-S).

AppTrap

Uninstalling could be as easy as dropping the application in the trash, but there’s always some settings left behind. This application integrates with your trash, so that when you drop application in it, you will be asked if you want to remove other files beloning to the application as well.

Audacity

Easy straight-forward digital audio editor. Wav, MP3, Flac and so on. Great for cropping ringtones and such.

Audio overload

Small player for those obscure mod / NES / Spectrum / whatever files. Some might also require CocoModX.

Boxer

A launcher for DOSBox, a PC emulator for running old games.

Burn

Burn is a CD burning software. It’s not much to say about it, it does what it’s supposed to do.

ClipMenu

Small menubar app that gives me access to the last 20 things on my clipboard.

CocoaPacketAnalyzer

Awesome packet analyzer for that really technical stuff.

CocoASpell

Sadly, OS X doesn’t come with a norwegian spelling dictionary. Installing this gem will take care of it. :)

Cronnix

Graphical crontab editor. Nice for running things on a given time and/or date. :) I actually use this to open hours.txt 15 minutes before my workday ends.

Disk Inventory X

Analyzes a given directory (or disk) and its subfolder to give you a report on disk usage. Nice to find those space hogs on your harddrive.

Dockless

Dockless let you make any app run in the background (no dock icon).

DropBox

DropBox is a universal internet disk service. It has revisions (how did this file look like a month ago?), automatic sync (all your computers has identical files), allows you to share files with other DropBox users, it even let you share pictures in your DropBox as a web gallery. The free account is 2GB, I bought myself a 50GB for all of my projects.

Evom

An extremely easy to use application for converting videos to MP4. Also integrates nicely with iTunes.

Facebook notifier

What can I say, I’m an addict. :) Facebook notifications on your desktop and quick access to your profile.

Flip4Mac

This is a WMV (Windows Media Video) plugin so you can watch online video encoded as such.

Fluid

Fluid is a Site-Specific Browser (SSB) that allows you to create desktop applications out of webapps. I use it for API lookups, Google Reader, GMail and more.

Fraise

Fraise is what is known as a «Notepad replacement» in the Windows world. It does syntax highlighting for most programming languages, and has some very powerful text processing tools available.

FStream

A small netradio app. Handles a lot more types of streams than iTunes.

Google Chrome

This is the best browser, bar none. In the time Firefox uses just to launch, Chrome lets me launch, perform a search, visit the first hit and read it. I have also written a norwegian post with my favorite extensions.

Growl

Gives youy nice bubble notifications from a lot of programs. Very configurable and very pretty. :) Make sure you also install the extra utilities, like HardwareGrowler to get instant statusnotifications on USB devices, network connections and so on.

Handbrake

Video conversion and ripping done simple.

iStumbler

Wireless network scanner, which shows a lot more info than the normal airport menu. Also does Bluetooth and Bonjour.

JustLooking

A good picture preview program. Nice for browsing large collections.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is the freeware (or light if you prefer) version of ActiveState’s Komodo IDE. Even this stripped-down version has more features than any other free alternative out there. It’s also a big bonus that it look and feels identical on Windows, Linux and OS X. Syntax coloring, project management, inline compilation, error checking, autocomplete and much more.

last.fm

I consider the statistics and scrobbling secondary features. What really makes last.fm awesome is the ability to play automatic net radio based on tags or artists.

LogMeIn

Installed everywhere I can. :) Let you remote control any computer without the need for opening ports. Can also require user acknowledgement on a per-computer basis (for sceptical relatives).

MacPorts

The BSD Ports system adapted for Mac. Gives you all those geeky UNIX tools. ;-) Porticus is a nice graphical front-end.

Max

Audio conversion and CD-ripping.

MPEG Streamclip

Video software for conversion, batch processing and more. I use it to convert any video type into DV format so iMovie will use it.

muCommander

A universal filecommander, because most computers need one. This one does several protocols (FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP and Bonjour), several archive formats (ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ISO/NRG, AR/Deb and LST) and all the usual operations.

niceplayer

Universal player. Nicer to user than VLC, and does more formats than QuickTime.

Notational Velocity

Note editing and syncing with Simple Notes.

OpenOffice

I guess I don’t really need to describe this one. :)

OWANotifier

Let me keep an eye on my work email when outside of the corporate network.

Perian

Adds support for a ton of additional media formats to QuickTime. Too many to list here.

Remote desktop connection

Because you have to, not because you want to. :)

Renoise

Trackerbased music sequencing software. Mostly for nostalgic reasons.

Sequel-Pro

A desktop client for MySQL. Think of it as phpMyAdmins agile little brother. :)

SIDPlay

For that old C64 feeling! ;)

Skitch

This is the ultimate picture… uhm… faciliator. :-P Inputs from screenshots, files, drag’n'drop. Annotate, draw, edit. Outputs to drag’n'drop, webpublish, file, anywhere. I use this all the time!

Skype

While iChat has very good conference abilities, it’s not cross-platform. For audio/video conferencing with Windows users, this is the only viable alternative.

SlimBatteryMonitor

It has always bugged me that OS X’s battery meter can’t be set to show only when actually on battery (or charging). Luckily, this one can.

SOAP Client

A simple SOAP Web Service client. Nice for debugging. The same author also has a XML-RPC Client.

Spark

Spark lets you create global hotkeys for just about everything. I use it to start Terminal.app, control iTunes and much more.

SpeedCrunch

Incredibly fast and easy «single-line» cross-platform calculator.

Spotify

The program that really changed how I consume my music! Listen to any song, create and share playlists, etc.

Steam

For all your gaming needs. :)

Textual

Simplistic but feature-rich IRC client.

The Unarchiver

For extracting any archive format you throw at it.

Transmission

A simple and effective BitTorrent client. Though the upcoming beta of uTorrent also looks promising.

VICE

Cross-platform Commodore emulator.

VirtualBox

Free, capable desktop virtualization. Can’t see any reason to pay for VMWare, when this is available.

VLC media player

The ugly and cumbersome, but extremely powerful media player. :) I install this on all operating systems. It uses builtin codecs for all media formats you can throw at it. Whenever I encounter a file I can’t play elsewhere, VLC will. It even has conversion abilities.

WineBottler

Sort of Wine for OS X with a lot of tricks up its sleeve! :) Let me preview my sites in Internet Explorer.

And the few programs I actually found worth paying for:

• Airfoil – Send audio from any app to an Airport Express.
• Coda – The best web-centric IDE for any platform!
• Interarchy – Just plain awesome FTP/SFTP client.
• Mailplane – Standalone GMail «client».
• Meerkat – Just plain awesome tunnel handling. SSH tunnels, Bonjour support, Application triggering… This one does it all.
• NetworkLocation – Dynamically changes system settings (and more, for instance start a Meerkat tunnel) based on your location. Location may be derived from wireless networks, cabled networks, bluetooth and USB devices.
• Things – GTD-compatible todo list application with its own iPhone companion.

And my screensavers:

• Lotsawater – Water effect on top of your desktop.
• PongSaver – Pong as a screensaver.
• ShuffleSaver – Slideshow based on tags/authors/sets from Flickr
• Space Invaders – The classic game as screensaver.
• Word Clock – A typographic screensaver featuring the current time and date.
• …White Knight Logic – A collection of 3D screensavers.

I will probably update this entry as I discover new applications (and scrap my old ones), so if you’re a Mac user yourself, feel free to bookmark it. :)

Edited: 11th july 2007, 27th june 2007, 24th september 2007, 24th september 2007, 13th december 2007, 3rd december 2008, 6th december 2008, 7th december 2008, 3rd january 2009, 26th september 2010.

For quite a while, I’ve been using a free service called ScheduleWorld for syncing the calendar on my mobile phone against my Google Calendar. It’s a service that provides sync for calendars, notes, todo-items and contacts. It supports all of this through a J2ME app for mobile phones, SyncML (which most new phones support, including my Nokia N80), Google Calendar integration and a dedicated Mozilla Thunderbird plugin (there are SyncML plugins for Thunderbird, but the SyncML protocol is hard to get a perfect implementation of). The page also has a webinterface for all your data, so it’s easy to view your «stuff» even if all of your clients are unavailable.

It suddenly occured to me that I might as well move my data completely to this service instead of relying on several third parties for this. I installed Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Lightning (a calendar/todo extension for Thunderbird) and the SW Thunderbird plugin and I was ready to go!

Ofcourse, once I set up my phone to synchronize contacts and imported the GMail address book into SW as well and they both showed up in Thunderbird, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. Thanks to the Duplicate Contact Manager extension for Thunderbird it didn’t took me long to clean it all up. Granted, I had to do 4-5 syncs between the phone and Thunderbird before the list was completely cleaned up, but it was definitely worth it. :)

And for mail, you might wonder? I still route all mail through GMail, but I’ve gone back to my old setup of using my own Courier IMAP-server, which uses fetchmail to automatically fetch all GMail. Importing everything back from GMail into the IMAP server was relatively easy, I just started fetchmail again and it churned away for an hour. Thankfully it started from the last date the account was accessed through POP3, which was when I stopped fetchmail on my server last autumn. :) Unfortunately, I did get quite a bit of duplicate messages after the import, but it was easily remedied by the Remove Duplicate Messages extension for Thunderbird (2.0-compatible version available in the comments for the extension).

As an extra tip, I figured out a way to share config files between work and home aswell. I set up a folder in my home directory called «share», which essentially is a Subversion working copy. I keep my mail signatures there, so if I edit them at home, all I need to do is commit the changes and perform a update the next time I log in at work. :) Program settings can also be stored there, and all I need to do to get it working is symlinking the real config file to the one in my share folder. :)

So there you have it! Signatures, todo-items, calendars, address books and mail – all shared across home computer, work computer and mobile phone! :) If I’m on someone else’s computer I still have Horde to fall back on for reading email (or my WLAN-enabled Nokia N80 which comes with an IMAP reader), and ScheduleWorld’s web interface for my organizer.

Warning: At the time of writing, ScheduleWorlds Thunderbird extension is not tested for Thunderbird 2.0. It worked for me (some phone numbers were «invisible» in Thunderbird, but were still present in both the web interface and on the phone), but other people have had problems with the combination.

Alternative 1: Ofcourse, the snappiest way to get mail from GMail is to set GMail itself to forward the mails instead of using fetchmail. This also let you use any IMAP server (for instance if you company provided you with an IMAP account). Unfortunately, this wasn’t an option for me as my server can’t accept incoming mail traffic (so it’s purely a dummy server).

Alternative 2: If you do not trust a third party with your calendar and mobile sync isn’t an issue for you, Sync Kolab promises to sync all information across Thunderbird installations by using an IMAP folder. A pretty smart concept. :)

So the time came to revisit my old friend, Google. I imported all my old mail into GMail using GMail Loader and set all my other mail accounts to forward into it. Since GMail lets you reply to mail with the same from-adress you received the original mail to, this setup is transparent to people you communicate with. :) I also moved my todo-lists to the Google Personalized Homepage todo gadget, my notes to Google Notebook, my calendars to Google Calendar, my RSS-feeds to Google Reader (which by far is the best online RSS-reader I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a lot!) and presto! I’m back at the Google Personalized Homepage. After trying it a while, I really can’t say I regret the migration. It has everything I need and then some. :) Click on the picture to see what it looks like right now.

And with Google recently adding Tabs and drag’n'drop to their API, developing new gadgets should be a breeze! :)