Now that I had to reinstall Mac OSX I have been trying some new applications. Some I liked, some not, and here is why:

Vienna (RSS Aggregator)

I was using NetNewsWire for my RSS feeds, but the big downside is that NNW is not freeware. Vienna is a new tool that is open source and free, which provides all the major features needed. I must say that even the internal browser is better than in NNW! How to switch? Download the tool, export your feeds from NNW and import them into Vienna.

Twitterrific (Twitter Tool)

I signed up for Twitter a while back but didn’t get the whole point. Now with Twitterrific it is easier to update your Twitter. I still don’t get what the point is. Maybe my problem is that there are now interesting people to get Twitters from, and I myself ain’t interesting enough to keep Twittering.

Adobe Flex 2.0 Builder (Flash Tool)

I know that this is not freeware, but it is a mighty handy tool. The whole concept of Flex is just so much more manageable than using Flash 8.

Not familiar? The concept is that you use their builder and language (MXML) to build the GUI and then connect ActionScript to certain handles. It is just very easy. To bad though that it supports Actionscript 3.0 which is so new that most sample code on the web is not 100% suitable for use with Flex. By the way, the builder is build on Eclipse which makes it very easy for us Eclipse users out there.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta

Although still in beta I really like CS3. In the first few days of the release almost any Photoshop or design related Vodcast had a screencast of some of the new features. My new favorites? Smart filters and the new “Align Layers” and “Blend Layers” functions. Smart filters just adds more flexibility where Smart Objects started the revolution in CS2. I used the two layer functions to make some nice panoramas of old pictures I had. It was really just too easy. Kudos to Adobe.

Last friday my harddisk died. With it went 2 weeks of research and development. Why did I always make backups except for the last 2 weeks? Most of the important data is saved, but there is some data that I would really have liked to have kept. Well, all up and running again now with the original harddisk. Let me see if I can get this one repaired quickly.

PS: It was a Samsung Spinpoint M40 (2.5″ HDD, SATA, 80GB) for whom it may interest.