Favorite Productivity Mac Apps of 2009

2009 is my first full year as a freelance web designer and developer. Being in charge of my own time and resources makes me realize how I took for granted the ease of collecting a paycheck and the beatings project managers can sometimes take from demanding clients. This past year was a great journey and I'm confident freelancing is a great fit for me right now. Here's a list of some of the apps I'm using to manage my workflow, including Quicksilver, DropBox, Tweetie, PingFM, Google (RSS) Reader and TextExpander.

These tools are just apps I use to keep on top of news and technology. I plan to post another article of tools I use to manage client correspondence, invoices and maybe even a few tips for tax-season.

Could Google Wave Become a BaseCamp Replacement?

Google Wave is still currently an invite-only application. I was fortunate to receive an invitation from Brandon Carson over at Agami Creative. All conversations are organized into "Waves." If you can't sit through the 120-minute explanation of Google Wave's capabilities, try the short, 10-minute version. Its what got my wheels turning to envision this as a replacement for BaseCamp. Don't get me wrong, BaseCamp is an incredible tool for collaborating on projects, but it still costs money and its not perfect.

Making a Mobile Version of Your Site with Mobify.me

I recently asked my Detroit friend and fellow Michigan graduate Jin Kim how he goes about deploying mobile sites. The variance of browsers in the mobile space proves it's far worse than the desktop. Not to mention so many different screen sizes. It's a mess! Detecting for mobile browsers should take place at the server/CMS level. Detecting with JavaScript could result in latency between the server calls and what's rendered in the browser. Rather than deal with all of this, a few minutes with Google searching for "mobile websites" led me to Mobify.me. Mobify.me takes out the guesswork of mobile browser detection and makes it easy to serve up a pretty, mobile version of your HTML/CSS/JQuery-driven site. If you're a designer/developers like me, you'll love the flexibility of Mobify.me. I like it cause its free and it works! In the free version, Mobify.me simply puts a subtle grey link back to their page in the footer and "Mobify" in the page title. Here's a summary of how I got it to work for me.

Essential Firefox Add-Ons for Everyone

As a web-developer, I browse the web more than the average person. Between keeping up with trends, fixing my broken MacBook Pro, keeping in touch with friends, networking...its a perpetual juggling act. So here are a few tools that I began using recently to boost my productivity in Firefox (currently 3.0.11 on OS 10.4.11).

Essential Expression Engine Tools

I built this site using Expression Engine Core. I'm learning EE cause respected designers like Jason Santa Maria and Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain choose EE as their platform. I've got very limited WordPress knowledge, so this isn't intended as a comparison. I've read that EE requires more programming knowledge than WP. Here is a list of tools currently being used on my site. I welcome all of your questions.