Ennui Blog

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It can be difficult finding an Apple app for a specific task. Especially if you’re in the middle of a project and need a program quickly to do one thing and do it simply. So, I’ve put together a list of the 10 Mac Apps that you may not have heard of in the hopes that some people find these programs as useful as I have.

Adium

All iMacs come with iChat but it’s not fully featured enough, especially if you use Yahoo or MSN Messenger. Adium is a multi-protocol instant messenging app. It combines all the major IM protocols into one app. You can use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Bonjour, Jabber, iChat and much much more. Best of all it’s completely free.

Cost: Free
Website: Adium

Evernote

Evernote is an incredible application. It’s a multi-platform notetaking program. It has a standalone program for taking notes, an iPhone program and a web based client. You can edit a note on any medium and they will all stay synced with each other. It’s revolutionized the way I write. A really cool feature in the iPhone program is that you can take photo snapshots and sync them. The program and the service are free (but there is a usage quota - I have never hit it).

Cost: Free
Website: Evernote

Livequartz

Everyone knows that photoshop is the mother of all image editing applications. The problem is that I have no freaking idea how to use it. Simple tasks elude me and I don’t have the time to learn it. Livequartz is a simple application sort of like MS Paint, you can edit images quickly, resize, save in a multitude of formats and do more advanced things. It’s open source and free. Great little program, it’s light and quick. You’ll have an image resized before Photoshop even opens.

Cost: Free
Website: LiveQuartz

Filezilla

Transmit is the best FTP client for Mac, in my opnion, but FileZilla is a good, free full featured alternative. It intergrates well with OS X and is very stable. It’s free and open source as well.

Cost: Free
Website: FileZilla

NeoOffice

Don’t want to gouge your eyeballs out installing MS Office for Mac? NeoOffice is a good alternative. It’s free and works with all the Office formats. It’s pretty fast and is now native to OS X.

Cost: Free
Website: NeoOffice

Scrivener

Scrivener is a fantastic writing program. It’s designed to help you brainstorm your ideas, outline them, put in notes and images and then finally write your book. Once your book is written, it will compile it for you in a Word Doc. It also has full screen writing mode, which takes away all distractions. You can do all of this in one program, it’s fantastic.

Cost: $39.95
Website: Scrivener

iStat

Not really an application. It’s a free dashboard widget that tells you everything you could possibly want to know about your computer. It tell you how much hard drive space you have, how much ram is being used, CPU temp, etc. It has it all. Excellent widget to have to keep tabs on your Mac.

Cost: Free
Website: iStat Widget

Journaler

This is a great little program if you want to keep a daily journal. It has all the requisite text editing features needed, it’s laid out like Apple Mail and other similar program. What sold me was that you can choose to blog your journal entries or you can export them easily to another format. Great for if you ever want to turn it into bookform.

Cost: $34.95
Website: Journaler

MarsEdit

I manage about seven blogs right now and it got increasingly annoying to login to all their respective web interfaces. This consolidates all your blogs and puts them into one program. You can write and update blogs on most platforms directly from the program. You can also enter your own HTML and upload images. It’s great. It has saved me a lot of time.

Cost: $29.95
Website: MarsEdit

Papers

Paper is a pretty cool app. It searches your hard drive and indexes all or your PDF files. You can rate them, tag them and organize them like you would in Mail or iPhoto. Pretty slick application. Useful for me because I save PDF’s when I come across an interesting story that I want to keep, for ideas and research.

Cost: $42.00
Website: Papers

I recently decided that it would be a good idea to add a link directory to one of my blogs, Anglotopia. I wanted to create a repository for links related to Britain and Anglophilia. I figured there was a simple Wordpress directory plugin for this.

I was wrong.

A google search revealed two competing link directory plugins. Neither of them actually work and have been abandoned by their developers. Both have not been updated in sometime.

If you’re really interested, here are the links.

WP-Directory
WP Link Directory

Initially, both were rather impressive. They were integrated well into Wordpress and their interfaces made sense. The only thing is that they didn’t work. Both suffer from pretty much the same problem, they fail to actually display any links.

They both display the categories just fine. But both fail to show the actual links. I did some digging and this has to do with them being incompatible with the latest Wordpress updates. And since neither plugin has been updated in quite a long time, that leaves us with no Wordpress Link Directory Plugin.

Since I don’t know PHP or how to write Wordpress Plugins, I have not idea how to figure how to fix the Wordpress Link Directory Plugins.

There is, however a roll your own solution that I adapted to fit the situation. It’s called PHP Free Directory. It’s a simple PHP script that can run along side Wordpress since they use the same platforms. It can even coexist in the database you use for Wordpress (be sure to use a different prefix).

It’s fully customizable and themeable. Though, it would take some work to make it look like your Wordpress theme.

PHP Free Directory doesn’t take much work to set up. Just change the setting in the config.php file with your preferred text editor and upload the files. Run install.php and in a few seconds you’ll have a full operational link directory. Best of all it’s free.

The only caveat is that to remove the footer, you need to buy a license, which is $50. There is also a more advanced script that has more functionality such as charging people for links.

Now, the question is how to integrate PHP Free Directory into Wordpress? The simple solution is to just keep it separate and put a static page link in your header to it.

That’s all well and good but it’s not integrated in the blog.

The solution I found was simply to embed the page in an iframe (using the tag. This will put the directory in a frame on the template page and the user can navigate through the whole directory.

I don’t think there are any SEO issues with this, Google theoretically treats the iframe as a separate page and should crawl it accordingly. It’s not elegant, but it works. I don’t have an example because I opted to just let the directory live on it’s own for now.

It would also be feasible to simply copy the code of a loaded PHP Free Directory index page into your wp page body. Again, this works. But any clicked linked will take you to the actual directory and you’ll have to update the page every time you make changes to the front page.

Hopefully, some good soul familiar with PHP and Wordpress will adapt this fantastic script into a Wordpress Plugin. I’d like to see PHP Free Directory as a Wordpress Plugin.

Stay tuned for tips on how to customize PHP Free Directory. There is also a forthcoming post on how to put a static link in a Wordpress header.

Check out the two link directories I’ve set up.

Anglotopia - Anglophile Link Directory
BacklinkUtopia - SEO Link Directory

I love GoDaddy.com
. They provide and excellent one stop for domain names and hosting. The integration of all their services makes it very easy to set up websites and web businesses.

That being said, I’m never one to pay full price for anything. So, here’s a collection of Godaddy.com Coupons
I’ve been using to get good deals.

If you discover a new one, please feel free to post it in the comments or forward it my way.

Coupon Code	Godaddy Deal	Notes
BTPS4	10% off anything
hash1	10% off anything
BTPS7	20% off an order of $50 or more
chill1	10% off anything
chill2	$5 off a $30 order
chill3	$6.95 for .com domains
OYH2	$5 off a $30 Purchase
OYH1	10% off anything
OYH3	$3 off any .COM = $6.95	Works on Renewals
hash2	$5 off a $30 order
hash3	$6.05 for .com domains
gdd1101c	10% off any order $40 or more
cjcdom001t	$1.99 .info domains
cjc695b2	30% off renewals and new .com domains
gdbb80520	20% off an order of $75 or more

When I was a kid, I had a really cool book called “Free Stuff for Kids.” It was a great book that had loads of information on things that you could send away for and get that cost nothing except a stamp. It was great for learning how to write letters and request things in the mail, an art lost on many people these days.

My favorite thing to send away for was free road maps. I loved maps (still do). I could stand in front of a map for hours studying it and learning about it’s contents, learning where things are. Well, sending away for free maps was something I sort of forgot about.

Last week I was sitting in Barnes and Noble trying to decide on which map of the British Isles would suit me best and I realized, I probably didn’t have to pay for this map. In the age of the internet it’s now a lot easier to find and request free maps.

There is already a blog that wrote about how to get free roads maps of the 50 US states, so I’m not going to cover that. But the blog entry is a great place to find free road maps of the US. Basically you need to contact either the local state tourist board or highway department and they will be more than happy to send you a road map. Check out free US State Road Maps here.

Instead, I would like to focus on free road maps from international locales. These maps are generally harder to find and definitely more valuable.

Most countries with a tourist industry have a Tourist Office that helps advertise them abroad. Find the agency in your country and simply write or call them and request a map of the country. Tell them that you are planning a trip and would like a map to help plan your trip. Most of the time, they will be happy to oblige.

Below is a continually updated list of the countries I was able to find free tourist maps and free road maps. Some took a quite a bit of digging but I want to provide this information to everyone.

If you click a link and it’s dead, please let me know. If you come across a country that’s not listed that has a free road map, feel free to e-mail or write a comment suggesting it.

Without furhter ado, here’s the list of free international road maps.

Free New Zealand Road Tourist Map

Free Germany Road Map Autobahn Map

Free Anguilla Road Map

Free Israel Tourist Map Road Map Information

Free Ireland Tourist Map Road Map Ireland

Free Luxembourg Tourist Road Map

Free Belgium Tourist Map Road Map

Free France Road Map Tourist Map

Free Monaco Road Map Tourist Map

Free Japan Tourist Map Road Map

Free Tourist Map Road Maps Scandinavia - The Scandinavian Countries - Denmark, Norway, Sweden Finland and Iceland cooperate together on the same tourist site, you can request free maps all on the same page.

Free Portugal Tourist Map Road Map

Free Slovenia Tourist Map Road Map

Free Tourist and Road Map of Switzerland

Other Free United States - USA - Free Road Map Resources:

FreeRoadMaps - Bravehost -Another source of all 50 States and how to get free road and highway maps from them. They also have resources on how to get free roads maps of the Canadian Provinces in Canada.

Free Road Map of US - America - Interstate System - This site is run by the federal government and allows you to request a free map of the entire United States Interstate Road System.

If a country is not listed here, check out Rick Steve’s List of European Tourist Information agencies. You should be able to write or call them and ask for a free map if you can’t request one online.

Be sure to Bookmark this page and check back often for the latest updates!