5.  Fluid – Fluid provides a native style application for your favorite web applications.  Fluid is a free application that creates a site specific web-browers for a given url.  This doesn’t sound all that great, but the concept works pretty well.  I usually find my Safari window filled with tabs and unable to actually locate what I’m looking for.  Even with Expose, it’s still hard to find my gmail tab.  Fluid also provides dock notifications for new mail when applied to a supported webmail site, like Google’s Gmail.  Overall Fluid is a really light weight application that works really well if you are stuck to using a web based mail client.

Benefits to using Fluid over Apple Mail:

• Very small footprint.  Files are not stored locally.
• When using Gmail as your main client it’s easier to access Google’s features such as tagging messages and applying filters.
• Supports 1Password and other third party scripts.

4.  Mailplane – Think of Mailplane as a perfected Fluid application for Google’s Gmail.  It provides drag and drop file attachment, sending screenshots, supports Offline Gmail, optimizes photos, multiple gmail accounts, and Growl support.  This is a really nice application but at $25 it’s a little steep for me to see how it’s worth it with so many free alternatives.  It does offer a very good experience for using Gmail with multiple accounts.

Benefits to using Mailplane over Apple Mail:

• Image optimization
• Offline Gmail mode with Google Gears

3.  Thunderbird 2 – Thunderbird is a multi-platform desktop email client that is based on the same framework as the Mozilla web browser.  Thunderbird is a fully functional replacement to any email client.  It’s main features are message tagging, great search ability, saved searches, notifications of new mail, third party add-ons, anti-phishing tools and other privacy features.

Benefits to using Thunderbird over Apple Mail:

• Large user community
• Updated often
• Tagging emails

2.   Opera Email Client – In case you haven’t looked at Opera lately, the multi-function web browser, perhaps you should take another look.  Opera 10 is a fast browser to launch and has always adhered to web standards.  Opera now integrates your email with your web browser.  One of the benefits of using Opera mail is if you have multiple accounts they show all new messages in a single inbox called Received.  It’s a pet peeve of mine to have to click on individual accounts to check new messages, like the iPhone’s interface.

Benefits to using Opera over Apple Mail:

• Integrated experience
• Labels
• HTML WYSIWYG Email Editor
• Built-in Emoticons

1.  Postbox –  Postbox is a great email client that is really for the pack rat in you.  It keeps track of everyone you’ve sent emails to and received emails from.  There is an amazing search that lets you search attachments, files, images, and pretty much any field.  They also have a excellent export feature that you can backup to save your email.  With threaded messages and tagged topics along with To-Do items Postbox is the most complete replacement for Apple’s Mail.  The only caveat is the $39.95 price tag.  I used Postbox for 6 months durning the beta, and loved it.  However, when it came out at $40 I couldn’t compel myself to buy it.

Benefits to using Postbox over Apple Mail:

• Amazing search functionality
• Direct access to file attachments
• Smartly threaded conversations
• Summary inspector pane
• Tabbed interface

Those are my top five picks for Apple Mail replacement.  If you have any others please comment below. If you just can’t give up Apple Mail, tell us why.

In case you aren’t familiar with wireframing, it’s the process of designing a mockup that acts as a visual guide to the structure of a website or application.  There are a lot of applications, both desktop and online, that let you mockup a design quickly.  Even if you aren’t a designer you may want to play around with these tools if you have a concept for a new website or other application.  This will really help a designer realize  the basic structure  you are looking for.

New to this scene of wireframing mockups is Mockingbird.  A beta online free application that is built on the Objective-J framework, cappuccino. It’s a very nice tool including a nice set of widgets for your disposal.  Also, you can share your mockups with your designer or your client.  It’s fully web based and supports multi-page sites.  Above you can see a simple mockup that took about two minutes with Mockingbird.

Mockingbird isn’t the only free wireframe tool, another great tool is Pencil.  A free prototyping tool that is a that is a plugin for the popular Firefox browser.  With Pencil, you can create complex application mockups, with built-in stencils, multi-page documents, and it’s cross platform.

One more application that is worth noting here is iPlotz.  While it’s not free, except for the 24 hour demo, it is a feature rich application for prototyping.  I personally like the ability to switch between themes, from hand drawn to Mac Leopard theme.  It also supports annotations by your added members.  The toolbox also contains an abundance of tools.

With iPlotz demo you cannot export from their site, but you can take a screenshot when you are done to share with anyone.

Do you have some indispensable tools for wire-framing or creating mockups?  Please leave a comment below.

Synergy is a great application and a must have for those people with more than one computer at their desk. Basically, Synergy is a KVM but done through software. This means that you can use the same mouse and keyboard across all your multiple machines, even if one is windows, one is mac, and one is linux.

From the developer’s site:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Learn more about how it works.

Download now.

At the number two spot is a great way to connect to your computer from home with out paying a dime. If you have leopard, then potentially you already have this feature, known as back to my mac. However, this requires a DotMac account. Which again is not free. There are applications like GoToMyPC which cost around $20 per month. However, all you need is Chicken of the VNC. This free application let’s you VNC (virtual network computing) from anywhere to your home computer, and it’s free. After installing you will need to find out the ip address of your home computer. You can do this by going to IP Chicken or whatismyip.

If you don’t have a router connecting all your home computers then that is all you will need to access your PC. However, if you do have a router then you must forward the VNC port 5900 to your local computer’s ip address. If you need help with forwarding that port check for your router here. Once you have all that setup you are good to go.

There is one more thing. You need to determine if you have a static or dynamic IP address from your ISP (internet service provider). If the address is static, doesn’t change, then you don’t need to worry about your computer at the other end not responding. However, if you have a dynamic IP address, then you have one last thing to do. That is setup a FREE account with DynDNS which will give you a domain name which you can connect to and which can be update to the correct IP address with their free software.

From the Developer’s Site:

A fast, lightweight VNC client for Mac OS X. A VNC client allows one to display and interact with a remote computer screen. In other words, you can use Chicken of the VNC to interact with a remote computer as though it’s right next to you.

Chicken features automatic server discovery via Rendezvous; listen mode for navigating through firewalls; an auto-scrolling full-screen mode; keychain integration; CPU performance throttling; remappable, smart unicode keybindings; mouse button emulation and native multibutton support; tons of supported transfer encodings including Tight and ZLib; and customizable connection profiles.

Screenshots:

Download Now.

If you haven’t herd of Skype you must be living under a rock. Skype is a great application which allows the user to make free Skype-to-Skype calls and very cheap Skype-to-Lan calls (Skype Out). There are other programs which make this program even better such as the new iPhone application Fring. Also, you can have Skype accept incoming calls using a standard phone number, and it is also very cheap. So if you haven’t already done so get Skype now and start connecting with people.

Information from the developer’s site:

Skype isn’t just about free Skype-to-Skype calls and easy, low-cost calls to landlines and cell phones around the world. You can also do much, much more.

For starters why not send a cheap SMS directly from Skype; forward a call to your mobile; or set up anonline number for friends, family and colleagues to make a local call from their old-fashioned and reach you on Skype, wherever in the world you are.

To start using Skype’s extra features, add a little Skype Credit to your account. If it’s calling you need, try one of our monthly subscriptions and see how much you can save.

Do more.
Get more.
Save more.

Cheap callsCall phones and cell phones anywhere at low rates.

Online numberFriends call you from a regular phone and reach you on Skype – anywhere.

SMSSend text messages directly from Skype.

VoicemailNever miss a call.

Call forwarding

Get your calls on your cell phone when you’re offline.

Screenshot:

Download Now.

After a short hiatius I am back with the number 5 free Mac application. I’ve always had a problem with writing down ideas and when I do actually write them down, say in OmniOutliner, I usually forget what the goal is. What problem I’m trying to solve and how this is idea relates to the main problem. Therefore, I decided to try out MindNode, mainly since it’s free. However, I’ve really found it useful to easily map ideas onto the canvas. So give it a try, and why not it’s free.

Notes from the developer’s site:

Features

Node Well. New nodes are created by simply dragging them out of the node wells. There is no need to access the toolbar or the application menu.

Clean Interface. The very simple and intutive user interface let’s the user focus on finding and developing ideas. Nearly no time is required to learn the interface.

Multiple MindMaps. The ability to create mutliple mind maps on one canvas, makes MindMap an ideal tool for brain storming sessions.

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In case you missed the top 20 applications so far here is a list:

#25 SuperDocker

#24 The Unarchiver

#23 Argonaut

#22 Last.fm

#21 Handbrake

#20 VirtualBox

#19 Caffine

#18 Azureus

#17 Adium

#16 Perian

#15 AppFresh

#14 Growl

#13 TGEmu & Military Madness

#12 AppCleaner

#10 Cyberduck

#09 Quicksilver

#08 Camino

#07 Google Earth

#06 VLC

VLC is a media player that extends support past QuickTime formats, but it also supports WMV (a typical Windows formatted media file) streams as well as a host of other formats. One of the main draws to VLC is that it is capable of playing a movie even if it is not fully downloaded. This is great for checking to see if the title of the movie is matching the content. It is also possible to see if the quality of the movie is any good before wasting time downloading it if is not.

You may recall Free Application #16. Perian, in this add-on to QuickTime we were able to extend the default media player’s capability. However, for some situations VLC still comes in handy.

Screenshots

From the developers site:

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and variousstreaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Supported for Windows, Mac, Linux, & more.

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If you are a fan of Google’s other applications, such as Google SketchUp(free 3d modeling), then you are probably no stranger to application number 7. Google Earth provides a great way to go sight seeing with out getting on a plane, in your car, or leaving that comfortable spot on the sofa. There are a few things that you might not know that really make this application more fun. Well first, and of course, it’s free. That doesn’t make the app more fun, just better. The second is a key command to turn Google maps into google flight simulator. It’s a far cry from the snazzy version released by Microsoft. However, I can’t fly over Auburn University in Microsoft’s version.

The commands for the flight simulator on Google Earth are posted here.

The next thing that really makes this application shine are the easter eggs found all over earth and found in Google Earth itself. Since people have the ability to add 3d structures through the use of sketch up these easter eggs seem to be showing up everywhere. Easter eggs are hidden little pieces of fun.

Here is one example:

Other easter eggs you can find are on Google Maps, but are really fun to go to with Google Earth.
Such as Ipod Shuffle, and there are countless others. Just do a Google Search on Google Earth Easter Eggs, or Google Maps Strange Sightings.

So go ahead and start playing with Google Earth.

From the developer’s site:

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.

If you are of a creative persuasion download SketchUp as well and contribute your building.

Download Now.