MacNative

I don’t know if a piece of software can have a less descriptive name than Xee. Other than the fact that its name rhymes with Glee, which is the emotion that is evoked when I actually use it, I haven’t been able to figure out what the connection is.

But regardless this little OpenSource application has increased my productivity in a major way. If’ you are a graphic designer or web developer like myself I am sure you have found yourself going through bucket loads of stock photography hunting for just the right image for your project. Although the typical use of viewing preview thumbnails or quick look in the finder is utilitarian enough for most, when you have a large library to look through that process can be extremely tedious. This is where Xee helps me out in a major way. I tell it what directory I want to look through and then it pulls up each image in succession, with lightning speed each click of the command and (right or left arrows) sends me rocketing to the next or previous image. If there is a massive image that will take a whole .3 seconds to load I can see it loading from top to bottom, make a determination of wether it might fit my project and then click to the next image without having to wait for the entire image to load. You can even preview image animation, a feature which I have long desired in Preview.

As a bonus, its lightweight and unobtrusive interface helps you focus on what you are looking for rather than fussing with the application itself. Along the top bar are presented some simple image manipulation options, and the bottom bar has basic information about the image; file size, full resolution size, image type, zoom percentage, etc…

To sum up it’s abilities here is the list from the Xee homepage:

• Display a large number of image formats – any format QuickTime or Preview can open, plus several more, including PCX, Maya IFF and Amiga IFF-ILBM.
• Easy browse through folders of images – open any file in a folder and use the toolbar, keyboard shortcuts or mouse wheel to view the other images in the same folder.
• Browse image inside archives, using the uncompression engine from The Unarchiver. It can read almost every format The Unarchiver can, which include Zip, Rar, 7-Zip, Lzh and StuffIt. It also supports the CBZ and CBR formats, which are just renamed Zip and Rar files, respectively.
• Effortlessly copy, move, rename and delete of images while viewing.
• Losslessy rotate and crop JPEG images. This lets you edit your digital photographs without losing quality by re-compressing them like most other editors do.
• View more EXIF data for JPEG files than Preview, and also other kinds of metadata, like XMP or IPTC. It can even try to identify what program or camera created a JPEG file by analyzing its quantization tables.
• Extract bitmap images from inside PDF and SWF files. Many PDF files contain scanned pages in bitmap form, and Xee can read these and show them as bitmap image, and even save them. The same goes for bitmap images inside SWF files.
• View images in full-screen.

So check it out and see how useful it can be in your design workflow.

Xee Homepage

Download

It may have a funny name, but this little app packs a big resourceful punch. Cyberduck is an amazing piece of software, initially setting the stage for superb FTP access and file manipulation, but it doesn’t stop there. Cyberduck has a vast array of different protocols that it supports, allowing you to connect to virtually any location and transfer/manipulate files on the remote location.

Here is a short list of protocols that it supports:

• FTP
• SFTP
• WebDav
• Cloudfiles
• Google Docs
• Amazon s3

to name a few.

It’s interface is sleek and simple, providing for a seamless user experience. With support for such features as “quicklook”, “Growl”, “Spotlight”, and “Bonjour” it finds ways to fit into virtually any situation.

I have been using this app for years and it is a very effective, well rounded tool. I suggest that you never leave home without it. So without further adieu click on the link below to check out the developers website, download the app, and when you are satisfied that it is everything you ever dreamed it could be, send the developer a donation, he’s done some hard work to make sure that our lives are better and easier.

Cyberduck FTP Client Homepage

The internet is alive with tweets on Twitter from people of all shapes, sizes and persuasions. This micro-blogging phenomenon seems to be an all consuming past time for some people. Even I find myself hungering for the opportunity to send out a nice little 140 character or less message about what I have gotten myself up to. But then I find myself with a little bit of a conundrum, What is the best way to share all those little bits of wisdom with my friends, and stay up to date with what they are all doing?

If you find yourself with the same problem then look no further! Canary is an impressive little app that does just what you want it to. It can easily carve out a permanent place as a member of your application family. With just a few clicks you are off and going, using the small composition area to compose your own “song” to tweet away.

Unlike many similar applications Canary does a great job of keeping you focused on what matters most to you, by allowing you to select the list of friends that you most want to pay attention to and ignore your other lists while you are focusing on your favorites. But don’t worry this sweet app has growl built right in  so as you receive updates they are displayed one at a time through the growl interface.

Not only is this app convenient, but it is also light on the memory usage. I have used a bunch of Twitter clients, but never before have I found one that works this well and also doesn’t stomp it’s foot all over the ram that my other “critical” apps are using.

So all other features aside one of the best features in this applications bag is the fact that it is not only FREE, but also completely open source. So if you are a totally insane coding monkey, you can take this already sweet app and add some sugar (if you know what i’m say’n). So click on the link below, give canary a try and you never know, you may find yourself as in love as I am with this sticky sweet app!

Homepage

Download