Free! My favourite two words in the English Language.

.

Why Read (700 Words)

As part of the new “value added” approach from the lifething.com this is the first of the toolbox posts which focus on giving you the tools, apps, systems and software that I have found to be useful in achieving great health, wealth, happiness and success.

Todays posts focuses on the Mac users out there and highlights the essential apps I have on my mac and what they will do for you. They are all free and so if you know other Mac lovers that would benefit from them why not forward the post onto them, it might just bring a smile to their face.

Click the images to be taken to the download page.

.

App Cleaner

The budding entrepreneurs Mac is his castle and no one likes a messy castle. Nothing important can get done when there is rubbish lying all over the floor. Fortunately App cleaner is a great little free piece of software that allows you to completely remove an unwanted add from your sexy mac without having to worry about ghost files being left behind. It also has a very easy drag and drop functionality. Messy macs will be a thing of the past.

Inkscape

One most awesome piece of open source software. I have used inkscape massively over the years for all sorts of design work, both personal and professional. It won;t do everything that Illustrator will do but it does the 10% of stuff you are going to need it to do and it costs a few grand less. Couple it with GIMP (unfortunate name) to replace Photoshop and you have an instant design studio. Now just understand basic form and colour theory and you are half way there.

MindNode

Incredible free and easy to use mind mapping / brain storming / noggin dumping / whatever the PC term for it is these days piece of software. I have used a lot of mapping software over the years and this by far is still currently my favorite. Incredible simple and quick to use and it won’t cost you a penny. Perhaps send the creator a digital kiss, or some chocolate cake.

Name Mangler

If you are a photographer than this piece of sexiness is a must. Name mangler easily allows you to rename and reorder hundreds of files at once with custom prefix, suffix and step options. Keeping an organized system of photos is time-consuming but this app significantly reduces the investment. Great name too.

VLC

Any possible video format you have, VLC will play it. Honestly sometimes it is spooky. You can have an obscure Japanese design video with twin sub sections in a format with more letters on the end then the chinese alphabet and this bad boy doesn’t even stutter. I now play everything through it as a matter of principle because I know it is unlikely to ever be stumped. Get it, get it now.

Vuze

If you download media (legally or otherwise I am condoning neither officially) vuze will help you do both. It has a beautiful GUI and I have very rarely not been able to find a good file of whatever I was searching for. Also there malicious adware protection seems to be impeccable as I have still not had any problems after nearly two years. Definitely worth the download.

DropBox

What can I say, if you have a mac and don’t have drop box then you need to have a look at yourself in the mirror and ask some serious questions. Possibly the single best free app for backing up files and sharing documents I have ever used. Simple to download and launch it sits in the top launch bar of your mac and auto uploads anything you put into it to a server on the net with zero effort from you. If you hack it then it is also possible to have more than one account. I have a personal one and two business accounts on my Mac. Shush.

Focus Booster

A recent addition of mine but it is great for benchmarking the 25/5 productivity pie rule. It is beautifully designed and sits on your computer as a glorified egg timer allowing you to keep an eye of your 25 min sessions. A small bell alerts you when time is up and then it kicks straight into your 5 mins break session. A great little number.