FANTASTIC FIVE of Mac FREEWARE

If you haven't checked out freemacware.com - do so. Their website is devoted to evangelizing the best freeware out there for the Mac. And this week, they are asking for folks to vote for their five favorite free Mac apps. Hopefully, it will convince Windoze users to take a peek at our OS, by showing them the high quality free Mac stuff out there.

However, they are doing it in an unique way - it's a contest. And you have to post the names of your five apps on your website or blog. And the winner (?) will get $100 for iTunes and/or Mac stuff. Sounds cool? Check out their site to see the rules.

Oh, OK - here are my five favorite pieces of freeware, in no particular order.

1. Quicksilver - the best searching and app launching utility out there. Throw your mouse away!

2. Google Earth - I feel like I should be paying real money for this one. Fun and useful!

3. TextWrangler - Great basic text editor with low RAM overhead. I use it to edit DNA sequence files.

4. OnyX - this app works like a personal trainer and doc for your Mac. Great suite of utilities you should use daily.

5. Cyberduck - this ftp application is very Mac-like, works well, and is full featured. Open Source RULEZ!

Honorable Mentions:
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Meteorologist - puts the weather in your menu bar; see everything at a glance & no spam. Gives me data for non-US locations! I wanted to include this, but it's not on FreeMacWare's list. :-(

iTunes - yup it's free from Apple (even for PCs) and does a great job of organizing your tunes. Indispensible! Would have been there too, but it isn't part of FMW's list either.

QuickTime- also free for Mac & Windoze.

Eudora - the sponsored mode is free and I've been using it for ever.

VLC - part of your vid playing tool kit, fills in QT's holes.

Skype/Gizmo/SightSpeed - Free telephony on your computer! Now if I could only get my relatives to use it.

4Peaks - molecular biology software. It allows you to edit DNA sequencer output files for analysis elsewhere.

And there are many more out there.

Well, I'm getting sleepy. I'll update this post tomorrow if I remember.