troykitch.com

MacHeist 3 is here.

There's a lot of controversy about the pros and cons (for developers of Mac software) about steeply discounted bundles of Mac applications, and MacHeist is at the core of it. The controversy revolves around what these kind of steeply-discounted bundles portend for third-party Mac developers. Will it ruin their ability to make a decent profit? Will it kill or maim third party development? Well, it's the third year of the MacHeist bundle, and I say the developers know well what they're getting in to. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

What we, users of Mac apps, need to know is that bundles are great deals, and MacHeist is hard to pass up. This year, I initially thought I'd pass on MacHeist, but I ended up purchasing it...even though I had no interest in many of the apps. Why? Because I could re-gift the ones I didn't want to my friends, and the few I did want justified the relatively small price. The price, by the way, is $39 for over $600 of apps, and if all applications are 'unlocked' (meaning they sell enough bundles) three more apps will be included to raise the total value to $950. Twenty-five percent of each bundle purchase goes to charity, which is an added incentive and a nice touch.

I decided to buy this bundle for Wiretap Studio so I could try this out as a replacement for my much-appreciated, but aging license of Audio Hijack Pro. What appeals to me about Wiretap is a much more simple interface and what looks to be a better (again, simpler) way to hijack audio. I also decided to spring for the bundle to get a Kinemac license. It looks like a promising app to create nice 3D animations, and at a retail price of $300, it's software that I wouldn't otherwise try.

Finally, I'm interested in Espresso 1.0 from MacRabbit, creator of my much-loved CSSEdit. I use TextMate, but I have to say...there haven't been many updates over the past few years. Espresso, on the other hand, seems poised to mature rapidly. Most people say it's a Panic Coda competitor, which I don't use. I do, however, use Panic's Transmit. If Espresso competently handles the chores that I rely on with TextMate and Transmit, then I'm all for it. I'm counting on the eventual unlocking of this app, I should add. It's the last app in the bundle, and I'm not clear what it'll take get unlocked. Still, every bundle I've purchased in the past has reached sale levels that permit unlocking of all apps, so I'm somewhat confident MacHeist will reach that goal. If not, I'm still content. It's still a good deal.

P.S. After I bought the bundle, I was pleasantly surprised by two apps. I like the included game 'World of Goo.' It's a lot fun and has great style. And I'm pleased with LittleSnapper, a screen capture utility from the makers of RapidWeaver, a great web development tool. As a user of SnapNDrag and Skitch for capturing and manipulating screenshots, I thought I wouldn't get much from LittleSnapper. But I like it. I like the library management, the clean and professional look of added text and other accoutrements (including callouts) that I can easily add to screenshots, and the ability to blur parts of my screenshots. It's still early in my testing phase, but this appears to be a promising tool that might just displace SnapNDrag and Skitch.

Just came across an interesting article on MacWorld. Here’s an excerpt:

Two well-known Mac hackers are updating a widely used hacking toolkit, making it easier to take control of a Macintosh computer…Although there are still many more exploits available for Windows software than for Macs, the new payload code means there is now “more or less the same functionality if you want to target a Mac box or a Windows box.”

No need to get too worried here, but it’s a good reminder that we are not immune from the problems that plague Windows users. And, as this article suggests, it may be only a matter of time before we face similar problems.

There’s a lot of brouhaha over the necessity of installing Mac antivirus software. I didn’t run AV software on the Mac for a long, long time, but now I do. Why? It doesn’t cost me anything. It only slows down system performance a tiny bit. And it makes me feel better. Here’s a full rundown of the steps I take to ensure a basic level of security:

I’ve used ClamXav (free) in the past and just started using iAntiVirus (free for noncommercial use) in the hopes that it’s a bit speedier. It’s not a bad idea to run an AV package, if only to prevent transmission of viruses to colleagues on Windows.

I think a good password vault is essential. The excellent 1Password is my choice. It generates complex passwords, ‘remembers’ them, and protects against phishing and keylogging.

I also use LittleSnitch to control and monitor outbound network traffic. I use this in the interest of privacy, but it will alert me if any unknown malware on my machine tries to phone home.

Next, I’ve set up my Linksys router with a kick-ass password and have set it to only accept connections from known MAC addresses that I’ve manually added (household Macs, my iPhone, my wife’s iPod Touch).

Finally, I use Apple’s built-in Firewall protection. It’s a good idea to make sure it’s turned on (go to System Preferences > Security > Firewall. Choose ‘Set access for specific services and applications.’ Also, I have both boxes checked in the ‘Advanced…’ preferences to enable logging and stealth mode). I also use NoobProof. Taken together, this establishes application and network firewall protection. See this article for more background on that.

If anyone has an alternative or better set-up, please share.

As an aside, if you use FinalCut Studio and keep getting an annoying prompt to allow incoming net traffic from ‘qmasterd’ every time you boot (even though you’ve already added it to the ‘allowed’ list), try adding /Applications/Utilities/Batch Monitor.app/Contents/MacOS/Batch Monitor to your list of applications that allow incoming connections. To do this, command+shift+g to paste in the file location.

OmniWeb is now a free browser. I'm a huge fan. I purchased OmniWeb long ago to take advantage of this browsers powerful features. It used to cost $15, but now cost nothing as of last Wednesday.

There are many features of this browser that make it special.

OmniWeb can manually store a set of pages in a 'workspace' so that you can easily recall them later. For instance, I have created a named workspace with five sites I use for work; a named workspace with sites related to house hunting; and named workspaces for two different projects I'm currently researching. Handy.

It also displays thumbnail previews of open pages in a fly-out window, which is a nice way to visually navigate between sites.

The best part is that it allows you to save unique settings for individual domains. This is useful for anyone, but particularly useful in terms of accessibility. My father-in-law, for example, has bad eyesight and is not computer saavy. So I set him up with an OmniWeb workspace. All he has to do is click on his workspace, and all his favorite financial sites load. For each site, I used OW's per-domain settings to boost text size to the largest settings possible without breaking each respective site. I also set up each of his favorite sites to open at a particular place on the page so he doesn't have to scroll around to get to the sections he most wants to read. And I set per-site ad blocking: this feature is fine-grained enough to select blocking of known ad sizes, pop-ups, third-party sites, and/or blocked URLs. OmniWeb allows you to optimize an individual domain so you get only what you really want to see. Again, handy.

There's a whole lot I like about OmniWeb, so I was glad to read that the browser will continue to be updated by OmniGroup (at least through version 6.0 -- it's now at 5.9). I'd like to see it go open source some day, but that's not going to happen in the short term. By the way, the browser runs on WebKit, the same engine used by Safari.

The Omni Group also made several other apps free last week, including the screen effects and presentation tool OmniDazzle, the memory optimization tool OmniObjectMeter, and the disk cleanup tool OmniDiskSweeper.

Xyle scope for free. Not sure when this happened. Used to cost $20. I'm guessing this choice has a lot to do with the great success of Things. I wrote about Xyle scope in Jan. 2008. My conclusion then:

I almost bought this application but, in the end, I decided to stick with two free tools that perform most of the same feats as Xyle, even though I think they are much less elegant. I use Firefox when I'm working on websites, and have grown to rely on Chris Pederick's Web Developer and Joe Hewitt's Firebug.

I'm definitely adding Xyle scope to my toolbox now.

Opera is installed by Adobe as part of the Creative Suite.

Turns out Adobe has been using Opera for years as a rendering engine. I've read that it's used in all kinds of places: to display Adobe Help files, in Device Central (to preview how applications would look in different mobile devices), in Photoshop, in Bridge, and in Dreamweaver (which has apparently been using Opera since Macromedia days). I'm sure this is only a partial list.

With a little digging, I found the hidden Opera installation in the bundled contents of Adobe Bridge (you need to view the application's package contents to peer inside).

I discovered Opera was on my system when opening a torrent. Expecting Transmission to open up, I was surprised to see an Opera browser window. This, it turns out, is a common occurrence. If you run in to this, the easy solution is to right click the .torrent file, choose 'Get Info,' and then choose Transmission. Then choose 'Change All' so that all future torrent files will open with Transmission.

While I was a bit annoyed to see a browser I never installed on my machine, I'm not going to do anything about it since it's needed by my Adobe apps. But it should stay there, behind the scenes. I think I know how this happened. I recently reinstalled Mac OS X and reinstalled all of my applications. I installed the Adobe Creative Suite, and I later installed Transmission. When I opened a torrent link, the Mac OS had was still associating all .torrent files with Opera, as that was (prior to installing Transmission) the only application on my system that would accept this file type. That explains why I had to re-associate the file type. So the real problem here is that the Mac OS associated a file type with an application that is hidden inside a bundle. That seems like odd behavior to me.

And since I'm talking about Adobe applications, I can't pass up the chance to rant about Dvorak-Qwerty. All Adobe apps that were once Macromedia apps (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks) function as expected with the Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout. All other Adobe apps do not support the D-Q layout.

This drives me crazy. We're now on the fourth iteration of the Creative Suites, and this inconsistency persists. Guess it's time to send Adobe another message.

Aviary, a collection of online design and editing tools, is an amazing technical feat.

A couple of weeks ago, Aviary brought their online vector editor out of Beta. It's called Raven, and it joins, well, an aviary of other online applications: Phoenix (image editor), Peacock (dubbed a 'visual laboratory'), Toucan (color manager), and Phoenix (an image editor).

These tools are powerful, free to use, and tightly integrated (meaning you can pass your work of art seamlessly back and forth between the different applications). But what really intrigues me about Aviary is where it's heading.

In addition to the current flock of Aviary applications, there are many, many more interesting creative applications coming. We're talking everything from an audio editor to a terrain generator to a word processor. And the Aviary team plans to eventually offer offline versions of their tools via Adobe AIR at some point in the future (interesting to note that Adobe already has an online office suite, and I've read that they plan to bring many of their creative tools to the web, a la Photoshop Express).

The tools at Aviary are free to use, and are well worth your time to check out. No, Phoenix is not as powerful as Photoshop. And no, Raven is not as powerful as Illustrator. But how many users really need that much power? For casual creation, artistic exploration, and simple projects, Aviary is fun and easy to use. I especially like experimenting with Peacock. If the interface seems weird, it's only because we've become so use to Adobe's way of doing things.



Basic usage is free. The catch is that Aviary is, at heart, a social site. So free usage means you are prepared to share your work of art with the world. Also, while you own the full rights to all works you create, Aviary retains a license to display any works you make viewable to the public "within Aviary and in any external publication provided it's in a way that promotes Aviary." Also note that your work will be accessible by others, so someone else can mash up your image and repost it. In this case, your name will appear in the attribution in the new derivative work. It's a great model for encouraging social creativity and sharing.

If you want more control (and more privacy), a pro-level subscription is $10 a month. If you are interested in using these tools to create artwork for, say, a Web site, you'll want to pay the fee. Not a bad deal when you factor in the considerable capabilities of these applications and compare with the cost of Adobe applications. No, Aviary is not as powerful as an Adobe app, but if you can't afford or don't want to purchase an Adobe app or Suite, Aviary offers some powerful tools to create some great art.

I'm an Adobe CS owner and daily user for work and home tasks. I like my Adobe applications. But I hope that services like Aviary thrive. I'd hate to see Adobe completely own the design and editing tool space both on and offline (... and they already own the offline space).

Competition is good, and Aviary is one of many alternatives out there offering innovation and quality service.

I spent the past month on a ship out in the Gulf of Mexico serving as a data manager for a research expedition. I won’t bore you with details about what I was doing, but I want to share some observations about my computing experience. I brought aboard a new 15" Macbook Pro running Leopard with a virtual install (using VMWare Fusion) of Windows 7 Beta. Windows was essential, as the database in which I did my day-to-day work was not Mac compatible. Here are some highlights:

- Data sharing: While many of the people on the trip used Macs, several people used PCs. Among us, we probably had about 30 Terabytes or so of external disk storage. Problems arose when we needed to share data. The PC people’s drives were generally formatted in NTFS. The Mac people typically used HFS+. The NTFS-formatted drives would mount on a Mac, but were read-only. The HFS+ drives would not mount on Windows PCs. No one used the FAT32 format, which is the only format that I’m aware of that is read/write on both platforms. We ended up formatting a few drives in the FAT32 format so these drives could be moved around and shared. Since my disk was one of the external drives that had to be shared around more than others, my solution was to set it up with multiple partitions: an HFS+ partition to use for my SuperDuper Clone backup, and a FAT32 partition for shared data. One interesting note: I formatted a 1TB drive with multiple partitions on a Mac in a matter of minutes. In comparison, it took about eight hours to format a 1TB drive with one FAT partition on a very robust and powerful PC laptop. Egads.

- Data backup: I was surprised that many people did not have a backup solution on the cruise. If their laptop tanked, they would not only potentially lose data, they would be out of commission for the duration of the expedition. I choose a cloned backup over Time Machine for this trip. The reason is simple: if something went terribly wrong with my laptop’s OS, I could at least boot from the cloned external drive and keep working until a point in time when I could take a time out to restore from the clone back. With Time Machine, I would have had to stop working until I solved the problem or restored the backup to the laptop (which can be very time consuming).

- Force-eject a CD: It’s good to know how to do this. At one point during my trip, I placed a corrupted DVD in my SuperDrive and couldn’t get it to eject. Usually, I can get a stuck disc to pop out by evoking terminal and typing the command ‘drutil tray eject.’ That didn’t work. I tried disk utility. That didn’t work. The solution: I had to disconnect the drive from Windows, as it was in use by Windows via VMWare Fusion.

- TextExpander: Data entry often entails typing the same thing over and over again. TextExpander is unbelievably useful for these sorts of repetitive tasks. In my case, I needed to paste the same blocks of text into my Windows database. I wasn’t sure if TextExpander would work from Mac to PC, but it did. It wasn’t as easy as it is on the Mac (i.e., I couldn’t use TextExpander abbreviations in Windows), but it did the job. Once I had TextExpander populated with a slew of repetitive text snippets, all I had to do was select a snippet from the Mac drop-down menu, then click on it to paste it to the clipboard, then paste into the relevant field in my Windows database. It was a bit cumbersome, but much easier than typing the same thing over and over again.

- Screenshots: I was planning to use Little Snapper to capture screen shots, but found this application to be too cumbersome and bloated for my tastes. I like the idea behind Little Snapper. It looks great. But it just didn’t fit into my workflow. I found myself turning to Yellow Mug’s SnapnDrag. It’s tiny, unobtrusive, and does the job well. It stays out of the way. I’ve tried so many different screen shots apps, and I keep coming back to SnapnDrag.

- iPhone: The only entertainment I brought on my trip was my iPhone. I brought music, books-on-tape, games, and some books to read via the Kindle and Stanza book reading apps. Overall, the iPhone did the job. I was duly entertained. The one exception is this: the tiny screen didn’t cut it for reading a book. It’s a nice idea. It’s not bad for quick reads like poetry or short stories. But it’s just not a comfortable or enjoyable experience when it comes to reading an entire book in my opinion. Next time I’ll bring a real book. Or perhaps I’ll have one of those Mac tablet-touchscreen-Kindlesque-thingies rumored to be just around the corner. Final point: the iPhone also served me well for screenshots on the go. In case you didn’t know this, if you press the two buttons on your iPhone or Touch at the same time, you device will take a snapshot of your screen and place the image in your Photo library. Very handy.

- VMWare Fusion: I can’t speak highly enough about this app. The ability to seamlessly run Windows alongside my Mac, to switch back and forth on the fly, to share folders, and to drag-and-drop between the two operating systems was priceless. Perhaps we take this for granted now, but just a few short years ago this would have been unthinkable.

Now for something completely different.

Let's talk about entrainment, the process by which wave frequencies in two or more interacting systems with different periods eventually lock into phase. You see it nature, for example, when fireflies start blinking together in unison. You hear it in music when different instruments in a jam session start to vibrate together in harmony. It even happens in our bodies. When you slow your breath, it leads to a slowing of heartbeat and brainwaves.

Now let's talk about binaural beats. Binaural beats are perceived sounds which naturally arise in the brain when two slightly different frequencies are played separately into each ear. It's best explained with an example: if you listen to a 405 Hz frequency (sine wave) in one ear and a 398 Hz wave in the other ear, your brainwaves will start to oscillate towards a frequency of 7 Hz, or the difference between the two sounds. This process happens through entrainment.

Here's the interesting part: while human hearing is limited to an approximate range of frequencies between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, brainwave frequencies associated with relaxation, REM sleep, meditation, and deep sleep fall below the 20 Hz threshold.

Huh?

What this means is that binaural beats can, in theory, be used to entrain your brain to frequencies that fall below perceived human hearing. If you search for brain entrainment on the Web, you'll find a slew of articles, thing for sale, and wild claims. And I know of at least one institute that will gladly take lots of your money to provide you with a life-changing (patented) brain entrainment experience at their facility.

My interest is more casual. I first came across the idea of binaural beats and brain entrainment back in the early 1990s while researching a paper in college. I found the idea intriguing. I played around with an oscilloscope to observe two waves suddenly lock together after growing closer and closer together. I found the idea of it fascinating.

Then, at some point (the timeline is a bit fuzzy), I came across a sound editor called Syntrillium Cool Edit Pro. This was a classy PC audio editor that once, to my surprise, included a somewhat-obscure menu for creating sound files for brain entrainment using binaural beats and pink noise. I tried it. I liked it. While I didn't have any crazy experiences, I did find that some of the files I created were effective for relaxation, meditation, and focus.

As I recall, the brain entrainment submenu disappeared at the next Cool Edit Pro software update after I started using it. I don't know why. Then, years later, Cool Edit Pro was bought out by Adobe. It is now called Adobe Audition.

Fast forward to 2009. While the auditory intrigue of brain entrainment (or, more accurately, the effects of this technique) remains in the speculative and hypothetical range, there are now several choices for the PC and the iPhone/Touch to try this out for yourself. The desktop programs are nice, but these are audio-centric apps that require headphones. It should come as no surprise, then, that the iPhone/Touch apps really shine.

Here's what you can get for your Mac, Windows, or Linux box

<1. SBaGen. (Mac, Linux, Windows) This is a good, free choice if you like to roll your own, are comfortable with the Terminal, and don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty. There are sample sounds for backgrounds you can download at the site. If you want to have some fun, and are the type of person who likes the DIY ethic, try it out.

2. BrainWave Generator. (Windows only) This isn't a Mac app, but I used it in my PC days. It hasn't really changed at all since those days, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like SBaGen, but it has a Windows user interface and is much easier to use. It offers a lot of user control to fine tune frequency settings. It's shareware. It now costs $40 to buy a private license, which is steep for an app that hasn't been updated since 2005.

2. Pzizz. (Mac, Windows) I tried the trial when it first came out a while back. It uses binaural beats, but also mixes in sound effects, people talking, and music in some sort of fancy algorithm. Many people like it. I didn't care for it. Why? I can only say it's a matter of personal preference. I preferred the free SBaGen. I preferred it, that is, until I found the iPhone apps.

But this was made for the iPhone/Touch

1. Binaural Beats. Free. Offers presets with nice background music. You can also try Easy Relax Ultimate from the same company for $2.99. I found the free Binaural Beats app worked for me as a relaxation and sleep aid.

2. AmbiScience. Try the full app for $.99 or the Lite free version. For the price, the $.99 app is nice application that does the job well. It includes entrainment for relaxing, meditating, focusing, or sleeping. The interface is pleasant. I bought it. I use it.

3. mind Wave. The cost is $1.99. Haven't tried this one. It includes some interesting choices such as headache treatment, weight loss, and creativity boost. I'm a bit skeptical, but it's not very expensive. You can also opt for "mind Freek," a separate app from the same developer that also costs $1.99, and offers more esoteric settings such as astral projections, out of body experience, etc. Sounds wacky, and results may vary...but it's cheap and may be fun to try. I think I'll probably pass.

There you have it. Does this work, or is it pseudoscience? The truth is likely somewhere in between. I will vouch for it as a tool for sleeping, meditation, relaxation, and focus. What is certain is it costs next to nothing to try aural brain entrainment. So why not?

So, the site is back to normal. The question is how did this happen? My passwords consist of 12 randomly-generated digits/symbols, I’m using the latest versions of WordPress and various plug ins. It could be that I was just one of the lucky first few to have their WP 2.7 installs compromised. It could also be that the attack came from a hole in one of my plugins.

It appears that only my wp-config.php and index.php files were overwritten. My MySQL database and theme files were unaffected. It wasn’t that hard to recover from this, but it was a bit scary. The majority of my time was spent checking through all of my files to ensure I captured the extent of the damage.

Whatever vulnerability I had, this incident is a good opportunity to take stock of ways to minimize the chance of this happening.

1. Spend some time learning about hardening your WordPress installation. One thing I learned after this incident is that anyone can peek into my plugins folder.

2. Backup. Backup. Backup. Not just your WP files, but also your MySQL database.

3. Keep up to date with the latest plugins and WordPress version.

4. Make sure your file and directory permissions are correct.

5. Choose good, long passwords. Use a manager like 1Password so you don’t have to remember what they are.

6. If you have multiple WordPress installs (or Drupal, Joomla, etc.), ensure those sites are up-to-date as well. For instance, I had two Drupal installs and two other WordPress installs in the same public directory on my host. My Drupal installations were not up to date. This could be a vulnerability.

I’m not going to rehash all of the WordPress security tips and tricks here. It’s exhaustively documented. Start with the WordPress Codex. Learn a bit about the .htaccess file. Learn a bit about file permissions. I’ve linked to some of the more interesting documentation I came across. Hope it helps.

I’ve long wished for a flexible, well-integrated tool that would give me complete control over browser choice when opening links. A couple of new applications now in public beta meet this need quite well.

Choosy

The first is a preference pane application called Choosy from developer George Brocklewurst. Once you make Choosy your default browser, you can then use this tool to direct links to the browser of your choice. Choosy can serve up only browsers that are currently running, or it can offer up all browsers regardless of whether or not they are open. You can also arrange your selected browsers in order of priority via the preference pane and choose an option called ‘use best open browser.’ This will open up the link, as expected, in an open browser that is highest up on your prioritized list. I settled on the option to have Choosy present me with a choice of all browsers, regardless of whether or not the browsers are running (this option presents a nice floating menu similar to what you see with the familiar command-tab). It looks the developer has big plans for this little app: check out his development roadmap. He hasn’t yet announced how much Choosy will cost when it ships.

Highbrow

The second is called Highbrow from Helium Foot Software. This tool offers many of the same features as Choosy, but there are substantial differences (the most noticeable of which is that it’s not a preference pane). Once you place this app in your applications folder and run it, Highbrow appears in the menu bar (and automatically creates a login item without prompting…I personally prefer to be asked). Since it runs in the menu bar, Highbrow is faster than Choosy when you wish to change your default browser on the fly. The app offers three main options: you can select a default browser from a list of all of your preferred browsers; or you can choose to have your links open up in whatever browser you most recently used (something which Choosy doesn’t offer); or you can have Highbrow ask you which browser you’d like to use to open up a link (similar to Choosy, via a small floating window). Unlike Choosy, it does not offer you a choice among current open browsers. Highbrow will cost $14 (with a $12 introductory price. No details on how long this discounted price will be available once it’s released).

Which one is best?

I tested both out and decided to go with Choosy for now. While both tools do the job, I prefer the way that Choosy works invisibly in the background. It also offers more customization options in an interface that is a bit more polished than Highbrow. If you are the type of person who likes menu bar apps (my menu bar is already quite full), or prefer to manually change your default browser per user session, try Highbrow. If you prefer to select from your currently-open browsers, or always want to choose from among a user-defined list of your favorite browsers, Choosy is a nice, unobtrusive option. The good news is that you can try both out for free to see which one works best for you.

Why Bother?

Why would you want to choose your browser when opening up a link? Web development is a primary reason: it’s often useful to see how a page renders in different browsers. Beyond that, here are few other reasons I like to choose different browsers on different occasions:

Firefox plugins. Sometimes I receive a link in an email and I want to save it in Delicious. I want to send that link to Firefox in order to take advantage of my Firefox Delicious plugin. At other times, I choose FireFox to take advantage of plugins geared towards web development, such as web developer.

OmniWeb power. I often like to use OmniWeb to take advantage of some of this browsers powerful features. For example, this browser allows me to set per-page site preferences, save multiple pages into groups for easy retrieval later on, and set up search shortcuts so I can quickly search a particular website right from the search bar. I also prefer the tabbed thumbnail views of all my open pages.

Safari speed. Sometimes I choose Safari when I’m casually browsing because it’s quite fast.

Fluid. When I’m using Fluid (which I use for my work web-based email so it appears as a stand-alone browser application), I usually prefer to open up links received in my inbox with other browsers instead of in another Fluid window.

A few other apps

Here are a few other (semi) related apps worth a look:

- Bookit. This is a handy advanced bookmarking application that allows you to keep all your bookmarks synchronized across all of your browsers (and across multiple computers using .Mac). It costs $12.

- IC-switch. This free application sits in your menu bar and allows you to change your default browser, emailer, FTP client, and RSS reader on the fly in one location.

- RCDefaultApp. This is a free preference pane that allows you to set the default applications that open for URLs, file types and extensions, and a whole lot more. It’s a must-have little management app.