Top Mac OS X Productivity Tools

[mandy]

22 lesser-known applications that can make your Mac experience more productive and more fun.

While Mac OS X is a top-notch operating system, there are always things it can't do, or could do a bit better. This applies to every OS, because if they were all perfect, then no one would make money writing third-party software! I know the Internet abounds with various list of "Mac Software You Can't Live Without"; if you can stand one more, I've compiled what I've found to be some cool and useful tools. No, I don't think you can't live without any of them, but they've all made my Mac experience more complete, and a little more fun, too. One further word: Don't take the order below too seriously; it's more a reflection of how and when things occurred, rather than a definitive comment on relative merit...

full article: http://www.informationweek.com/story/sho...=197700391

[mandy]

part 2 of the article:

Those of you old enough to have worked regularly on Mac OS 9 remember the Mac OS 9 Location Manager. It was a way to make switching network configurations dead simple. The reason for this was that Mac OS 9 couldn't do multilink multihoming, so if you wanted to switch your connection from wireless to Ethernet, you had to manually switch the active interface. Over time, you could tie a few things to that...start applications, set printers, etc.

With Mac OS X, the main reason for Location Manger died, but not the desire for the ability to say "I'm going somewhere else, do this". Actually, I rarely used Location Manager for changing network configs. I used it as a spiffy little application/configuration manager. There have been attempts to replicate Location Manager in Mac OS X throughout the years, but none ever did anything for me, until an acquaintance of mine, part of Centrix, Phil Letourneau asked me to play with it...

full article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/show...=197700439