photo by rebecca tillett, who is one of my favorite photographers ever.
I recently had to reformat my computer, which was a huge hassle (and resulted in this terrible fiasco – heartbreaking). For the past couple of years, I’ve had to start from a clean slate hard drive more times than I care to count, for one reason or another. (I will never own a Dell again, by the way.)
While I went through the process of making my hard drive my home again, I took note of what I consider my essentials – the things I absolutely cannot do my job without. I thought I’d share these things with you.
1.) Firefox with the Firebug add-on – Everybody uses Firefox, right? You don’t need me to tell you about this browser. Also, if you’re a web developer, you use Firebug. If you’re not a web developer, you probably don’t need Firebug. So, moving right along…
2.) Digsby – I stopped using Digsby for awhile, in light of the fact that the distributors were doing some sketchy things with it that made it act as spyware. However, I love it. The program is great, and the company responded to the backlash and made some changes, and it’s water under the bridge, as far as I’m concerned. I love Digsby. I only use it for chat now, however. I used to use it to manage all of my social networking, but it can’t keep up with my Twitter stream, which brings me to…
3.) Seesmic Desktop. Here’s a list of some of the Twitter clients I used before falling in love with Seesmic: Twitterfox, Digsby, Tweetdeck, Twhirl… The list goes on. I used some of them for months, some of them for mere hours. I love Seesmic. (Note: On my iPhone, I use Echofon – formerly known as Twitterfon.)
4.) Filezilla – It’s for FTP, and it’s good. I used WS-FTP for years, and it’s a bear. I also used CuteFTP for awhile, and it’s great, but not free. Move along, I said. Filezilla came highly recommended to me, and I am a fan.
5.) GnuCash - Money management! All of my friends use Mint, and I just can’t get behind it. I think this is probably because I do some creative things with my money management, and Mint is a little too fancy-pants for me. GnuCash is good.
It goes without saying that I also couldn’t live without Adobe Creative Suite. Photoshop is my best friend, and I don’t know how I ever lived without Bridge (which I only started using about a year ago).
So, that’s me. What about you? What are your MUSTS? (Feel free to include web apps, too. I’ll probably do another post about those!)
» Filed Under cyberculture
5 Responses to “My Webby Goddess Essentials”
Leave a Reply
Thanks for this post, Leah! It’s a huge help. (I love Adobe CS, too, though I need to upgrade and I’m debating whether, given my current lack of book clients, I can justify the expense.) I’ll definitely check out Seesmic and GnuCash.
You have my big MUST up there: Firefox. To me, it’s the best browser out there, hands down.
[Reply]
Try out the new Twitter implementation in Digsby. It shows the Twitter stream as a conversation and keeps track of what you have and haven’t read so you never miss a tweet. Try it out for a few days and send us feedback at bugs@digsby.com
[Reply]
I think that my list would go something like this:
Firefox:
I don’t think I could live without Firebug… It has saved my butt more times than not.
Cyberduck:
This just replaced Filezilla. I was surprised with how much like a Mac program it felt. Filezilla never quite felt like a Mac application.
Things:
I like lists… and things that make lists this simple are awesome.
Nambu:
Twitter application. I need one that’s pretty and has groups. ^.^
Coda:
This program is so much better than Dreamweaver it’s not funny. It’s fast, light, and I can edit on the server if I so desire.
Dropbox:
Nothing facilitiates multi-computer files better than this little thing, as far as I know.
[Reply]
leah Reply:
October 6th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Thanks for the great comment, Dana! I’m going to have to give Coda a try!
[Reply]
[...] – My Webby Goddess Essentials [...]