I don't often write about gadgets and tools, so I thought I'd share some of my faves right here on my own computer.

Cyberduck -- A freeware ftp program for Mac that stands right up there with shareware Fetch. My only complaint is that it has one or two quirks in how it interfaces with Textwrangler (below). But nothing I can't live with. In fact, I find the interface a bit more intuitive than Fetch, so even though the dog has my 50 bucks ($25 each for two seats), I think I'll be working with the duck.

Textwrangler -- My favorite coding toy. It's easy to navigate, what with its document drawer, can open and save files directly via sftp/ftp, color codes program code, and does nice diff work. And best of all it's free. (But I may take advantage of a short-term sale to upgrade to BBEdit, which has all of these features plus the CVS capabilities I've been needing.)

OfficeTime -- You can download this for a 60-day trial, but it only took me a few hours to get hooked on this program. You can set up projects and tasks, with preconfigured rates. You track time by clicking on icons in the toolbar. Billing amounts are automatically calculated. It's also a handy way to keep track of your non-billable hours. (For example, how much time do you really spend reading blogs every day?) You can also have each project's and task's hours posted to your iCal, in the appropriate category you designate. There seem to be quite a few shortcuts and non-obvious features as well. This is $24.95 (special rate for a short time) that I will have no qualms spending.

OmniGraffle -- I was first introduced to this program when it was bundled with my PowerBook. I used it until the PowerBook's hard drive went through that agonizing click of death. I ended up picking up OmniGraffle for my iMac because I love how easy it makes to draw flow charts and menu diagrams for DVDs. (You'll see some of these charts here in the future.) A couple of days ago the iMac's power unit suddenly quit on me, so I'm back on the rehabilitated PowerBook ... and missing OmniGraffle a lot.

ecto -- This is what I use to post most of my blog posts. It's affordable, works on Mac and Windows, and is under active development, so it's always getting better. I hardly ever see the create-a-new-post form on this site any more.

And my latest fun with Drupal....

tagadelic -- Ber Kessels' module creates a tag cloud out of one's folksonomy-enhanced taxonomy. With Drupal 4.7 tagging is going to expand in Drupal, but it's nice to have this navigation tool now (and visible in the left sidebar here).

I'm also very intrigued by the new iMac. It has a lot of nice new features and a streamlined design, but they managed to keep it at the same price level. Let's just hope they managed to fix the problems with the midplane assembly that have been haunting the iMac G5s sold early this year ... including mine (which has gone through 4 midplane assemblies so far). I love my Macs, but I do recommend getting the AppleCare extended warranty coverage.

For the record: I have no business or personal affiliation with any of these products or their developers. I'm just liking them a lot.

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