Continuing some of the posts about Mac software and tools I use, this might be of interest – a few of the applets you’ll find in my menubar. The vast majority of these are free.
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- LittleSnapper – handy for taking annotated screenshots or grabbing webpages. I don’t run this all the time, but it was running to take this shot.
- Google Quick Search Box – I’ve been a Quicksilver user for a long time, currently I’m trying out QSB instead.
- Camouflage – hides the icons on the desktop. Great for recording screencasts, or just for tidying up.
- DropBox – handy for sharing files between Windows, Linux and Mac.
- Caffeine – disable screensaver for watching movies and presentations etc.
- iScrobbler – for Last.FM support
- Skitch – my screen capture utility of choice, which I do have running all the time. Not as good for annotation or web page capture as LittleSnapper, but quicker to use.
- Evernote – todo lists and note taking (syncs with iPhone)
- Eject applet
- Canon printer/scanner utility for the MP620
- SoundSource – very handy tool to select input and output sources, great for podcasting etc.
- Displays (enabled from System Prefs) – useful for presentations and viewing video on the TV.
- Language (enabled from System Prefs) – quick access to language, special characters, keyboard viewer, etc.
- MagiCal – pop up monthly calendar
Try Voila, for screen capturing and annotating. Its better than Little Snapper IMO!
Perfectly happy with LittleSnapper, thanks, and I’m aware of the copycat design adopted by Voila recently, so I wouldn’t try it anyway.
Andy, excellent list! I actually use or have used many of the apps on the list. You’ve pointed me to a few I haven’t considered and made me reconsider at least one that I gave up on (LittleSnappler). With that said, I’m wondering if you have played with either GrabUp or Jing. You say that you’re a happy LittleSnapper user, so I won’t try to sell you on GrabUp, but if you haven’t heard of it and it fits your usage scenario then you might enjoy it.
GrabUp: http://grabup.com/
This is a screenshot capture utility that cannot be any more minimal. Its a daemon that listens to the default Mac screenshot commands ⌘⇧4 and 3. Once you snap the picture it uploads it to grabup.com (or your own FTP Server with the Pro version), copies a URL to your clipboard, and in typically 1-2 seconds you’ve got a URL you can paste directly to the image. I praised Skitch in its early beta for its speed, but I found GrabUp to be so much faster, nearly instantaneous, that it rendered Skitch useless for me.
However, and this is typical for Skitch and LittleSnapper users, GrabUp doesn’t offer annotation or library storing capability. If you’re big on the annotation, then this isn’t for you, but its good to know or use in parallel.
For me, I realized that 90% of the images I wanted to share I wanted to do so without annotation and FAST. Skitch was too slow and LittleSnapper, although it has a great publishing service, doesn’t seem to publish automatically or support an equivalent (⌘⇧3 + Spacebar) window captures, something I am very fond of.
I’m interested to see your take on this.
Jing: http://www.jingproject.com/
Essentially the same idea but for video (and audio) screen captures. Free app, free storage, and decent upload rates. For those times where a video is necessary its my goto tool. Its likely that you have your own Screencasting application. To me the choice of which app to use comes down to familiarity with your tools. Jing is just dead simple but again its no heavyweight contender.
Well, I hope I didn’t sound too fanatical! Cheers.
Are you going to add WMB Toolkit to the lsit?
Nope.