Featured free software: Et cetera
Alarm Clock
Set the alarm to wake you up to the music of your choice and hit the snooze button with your Apple remote. Plus many more features.
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Alfred
Quick-launch app saves you time when searching your computer or the web. Launch apps with shortcuts, get quick access to web searches and bookmarks.
BetterTouchTool
Assign actions to your Magic Mouse or Touchpad based on a multitude of tapping, swiping and clicking combinations. A plethora of preferences allows you to refine settings such as mouse tracking speed higher than allowed by Apple. On top of that, you can enable window snapping in the style of Windows 7.
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Calibre
Manage e-book libraries, convert e-books in a huge number of formats, sync to readers (including iPad), view e-books with support for many features, and use a content server for online access to your book collection using a browser from any computer.
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DuckLink
Screen capture tool betrays its Windows roots, but has features that might help you overlook this: tall web page captures, polygon captures, annotation tools, and multiple captures that can be tweaked into one image.
eMaps
Interact with Google Maps — including street maps, satellite and street view imagery, driving directions, traffic info, and local search for many countries around the world. Among eMaps’ features are reverse geocoding, the ability to create and export customized maps, set a default location and save your favourite places in a dedicated menu.
F.lux
Adjusts the colour of your computer’s display to the time of day — warm at night and like sunlight during the day — automatically taking into account where you live and the type of lighting you have.
FinderPop
Control-click in the Finder and get a menu with a ton of options.
FlyGesture
Use pre-defined mouse gestures to invoke actions or chains of actions, similar to Automator.
Genius
Genius is a great little educational tool for memorizing the facts.
GnuCash
Personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL. Allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. Personally, I find the live-within-your-means method works quite nicely.
Growl
Programs running in the background can let you know what they’re up to. Example: When a download is finished, up pops a little window to notify you. Growl is configurable to work with the programs you choose.
iMedia Browser
Access your library of photos, music, videos and bookmarks in the same way Apple does with its iLife apps. Extend its capabilities with plug-ins.
iRed Lite
Expand the capabilities of your Mac’s remote control so that it works not only with Front Row, but with several other programs such as iTunes or Keynote.
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Kindle for Mac
No Kindle? No problem. Select from the 800,000 Kindle books available from Amazon and read them on your Mac. Features include syncing, notes, highlights, and search.
Launcher
Quicksilver is still alive and kicking, but Launcher provides a slick alternative. It launches programs, sends web queries to a number of search engines, creates custom commands, looks up word definitions, gives fast access to files, folders and URLs, executes shell commands, and has a built-in advanced calculator.
Listomator
Open a list and sort it alphabetically, by word length, or by the second word — ascending or descending. Also: filter with regular expressions and remove invalid email addresses.
MacTracker
A database of information on every Mac ever made — even those made by companies other than Apple. No detail is too obscure. You can even play startup chimes.
Masterspell
A series of drills helps you turn your brain into the best spellchecker of all.
MenuWeather
Place an icon in your menu bar showing the current weather and temperature. Click to show details plus a five-day forecast. Preferences allow you to set up more than one location, or change the look of the icons. (Donation requested.)
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Monocle
Universal search field allows you to choose from a variety of engines, including Google, Wikipedia, Windows Live Search and Yahoo! Search. Or add your own.
Pathway
Find your way through Wikipedia with a graphical representation of the articles you’ve visited.
ProVoc: Vocabulary Trainer
More than just flash cards, this app offers a slew of features to help you brush up on a second language. Or specialize in Spanish with Spanish Vocab. Or in French with French Vocab.
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Also try: Spanish Vocab
French Vocab
Quicksilver
Keyboard addicts will love the the way this app lets you of find and launch files and applications without touching the mouse.
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Remind Me Later
Open it up, type in what you need to be reminded of, and with a click it will be added to iCal. The cool part is that you can type in your reminder using plain English. For example, “Buy vitamins today at 2pm” will place a “Buy vitamins” entry in iCal today at 2 p.m.
Skim
A PDF reader with advanced annotation capabilities.
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Spark
If you’re into hot keys, you’ll be hot for Spark. It’s not all that easy to get set up, but you could very well find it worth the effort. With Xkeys, you get to focus on the function keys.
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Also try: Xkeys
Stellarium
Gaze with wonder through Stellarium at the night sky constellations from wherever you happen to live on this planet. Then go outside and see the stars as they are. Other cool ways to check out the universe are Celestia and SkyORB.
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Also try: Celestia
SkyORB
Time Out
Configure Time Out to remind you to a take a break every so often. A transparency covers the screen and a progress bar shows how long have until the break is over.
Timer
Stopwatch, alarm clock, countdown and clock utility all in one.
TrailRunner
Plan routes for long distance sports such as running, biking and hiking. It calculates route distances and can export directions into your iPod.
TypeTrainer4Mac
Back in the old days, I learned to type with a book called Typing Made Easy. I have to admit that book went flying across the room once or twice as frustration levels mounted. If only we had something like TypeTrainer4Mac back then.
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VirtualBox
Run Windows or Linux on your Mac with this open source alternative to Parallells or VMWare Fusion.
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Vocab
List words you’ve learned in European languages and see how well you’ve memorized them by plotting a graph.
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wClock
Ever wonder why the menu bar doesn’t display both the day and date? So have I. And it looks like Wolfware not only wondered, but came up with a solution called wClock. Speaking of menu calendars, you also might want to try MenuCalendarClock and MagiCal.
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Also try: MenuCalendarClock
MagiCal
Weather Vane
Put the current weather in your menu bar and get a five-day forecast by clicking. Works for cities around the world.
World Explorer
Search for any place in the world, then take a virtual walk in the streets and learn about attractions nearby. You might even find some surprises in your own back yard.