These are applications, services, and devices we use every day and/or for specific projects. For example, while we currently are not using CacheFly, we have made use of the service for particular projects. We expect this post to be updated routinely.
Offsite and Cloud Providers
Amazon Web Services
Apple iCloud
Google Apps
Rackspace cloudserversTM and cloudfilesTM
Backpack and Basecamp from 37signals. And by the way they use Amazon Web Services for storage.
Domain names, hosting, virtual and dedicated servers we use our WebServicesRock.US! affiliate.
Salesforce Cloud.com
Operating Systems
Apple OS X Mountain Lion
Most of our regular use and development is on Windows 7.
Windows 2008 Server, Web and Standard Editions
Ubuntu Desktop and Server often as a virtual machine on the Mac.
Application Software
Multiple OSes
TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. We use it on the Mac.
Cloud Storage
We recommend you create accounts with a couple of vendors in the event you are at a location that is blocking a particular vendor/URL. And yes this has happened to us on multiple occasions and going to plan B saved the day!
Box.net provides 5GB for free. They have excellent support for the applications such as LinkedIn and Salesforce and there iPad app is very good.
Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
SpiderOak SpiderOak provides an easy, secure and consolidated free online backup, sync, sharing, access & storage solution for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. We use it on Windows, Mac, and iPhones.
OS X iLife '11
Apple iWork '09 word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. We also use the iPhone app that both controls the slide show and displays presenter notes.
We use Screenflow for desktop recording on our Mac and also to record Windows when running on under a VM on the Mac. The new version added some nice features including easy publishing to YouTube.
Microsoft Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 continues to be one of the best Mac applications.
Growl Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen. Small popups occur such as when GMail or Skype users login or leave or Xcode compiles are complete.
VMware Fusion 5
Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac
Intuit QuickBooks for Mac. QuickBooks for Mac allows encrypted backups to your MobileMe iDisk.
OmniFocus is GTD® style task management for Mac OS X and iPhone. The software has good syncing functionality.
OmniGraffle Professional a drawing program - similar to Visio but for the Mac.
OmniPlan a project planning tool we occasionally use.
iStat pro is a free widget that lets you monitor your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes.
SuperDuper! is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. And it complements Time Machine.
Apple xCode development environment for Mac OS X.
TextMate TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors.
Aptana Studio
Panic Software Transmit ftp client that works with ftp, MobileMe iDisk, Amazon S3, WebDav and more.
Panic Software Coda one-window web development
Kaleidoscope is a Mac program used to spot the differences in text and image files. Review changes in seconds with the world's most advanced file comparison application.While our consulting work requires us to use various version control products, including the trash Visual SourceSafe, for our development we most often use Mercurial and Git. We had used Subversion for years but once we switched to a DVCS product there was no going back.
Version Control Systems
Git and github (git hosting) and Mercurial integrated with Kiln.
Versions Mac Subversion Client (version control system client)
Development Portals
We include here systems that combine some or all of the following features: bug, issue, and project tracking for software development; version control along with code review.
Fog Creek Software's FogBugz and Kiln hosted on a VM at WebServicesRock.US!
Atlassian's Jira which also provides hosted as well as downloaded solutions.
iPhone Applications
Analytics from AnalyticsApp.com
iStat Shows iPhone stats, monitors remote Mac, Linux & Solaris, CPU, memory, disks, temps, fans, and more. And it has some basic network tools.
OmniFocus Winner of the 2008 Apple Design Award for Best iPhone Productivity Application. We really like this program. It has multiple ways to sync but we use our MobileMe account here too.
Remotely lock your iPhone with Find My iPhone which requires a MobileMe account.
IIS Internet Information Server - web services. Much of our development targets IIS with ASP.NET.
FileZilla Client free open-source ftp client that runs on many operating systems. We only run it on Windows. There is a server now too that only runs on WIndows.
Development
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 The Microsoft Store is offering 12 free hours of training with your purchase now. There are numerous free and low-cost add-ins to Visual Studio. We'll show some that we use.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a great valued, full-featured UML diagramming program. We use it instead of the much more expensive Rational tools.
Processes
We expect to write about some processes that we routinely use in the future.
Devices We Use
Apple MacBook Air 2nd Generation
Apple 20" iMac
Apple Magic Mouse
Blue Pen, Mechanical Pencil, pape, and iPhone Application Sketch Pad
The mStand Laptop Stand By Rain Design is a nicely designed stand for desktop we use regularly when working in bed or on the couch. It keeps the laptop at a good angle and most importantly keeps the ventilation at the back hinge clear from blankets etc.
