Rose Cantine

The beginning of every year is a time for lists. Instead of posting boring New Year’s resolutions, I decided to post a list of applications I use everyday that make a big difference in my life and my business.

I live in Amsterdam but my friends, relatives, business partners and contacts are all over the place: Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Santa Cruz, Australia, Aruba. I also travel a lot. Without Skype, I would be spending thousands of euros on phone calls. Now, most of my calls are free because most people I talk to are also on Skype. Applications such as Skype and Gizmo Project (see below) have made it possible for pajama entrepreneurs such as myself to build and run businesses. Without a large corporate budget and VC funding, I can’t afford to waste money on phone calls. Even the SkypeIn calls (to landlines and mobile phones) are very cheap.

Gizmo Project is a Skype-like application which I use on my Nokia N80 and 770 Tablet for VOIP calls while on the go (assuming I find a Wi-Fi network). I also use it if the quality of the Skype-to-landline or Skype-to-mobile call is lousy. Skype isn’t perfect, so Gizmo is a necessary backup. For some reason, calls to landlines via Gizmo Project on a Mac are often better in quality than those on Skype (Mac).

You know what this blog built on? Wordpress. It’s easy to install and maintain. Didn’t you wish you could stay that about all applications?

What would I do without this awesome photo-sharing site? It gets better every year. They have geotagging too which allows you to assign your photos to a location on Google Maps. Flickr’s open API encourages other developers to work with them in integrating Flick into websites and other applications. I am always shocked when I meet people who love posting photos online, but have never heard of Flickr. Where have you all been? Everyone move to Flickr NOW. You can see my Flickr photos here.

Lots of storage and easy to use on a mobile phone, too. I have Gmail installed on my Nokia N80 and can access it via Wi-Fi or GPRS (although I learned recently not to use GPRS outside the Netherlands — the data roaming rates are outrageous).

I am on a Mac and this is the best RSS news reader for OS X, the Mac operating system. I’ve been using NetNewsWire for three years and every time I see a new RSS news reader, I try it, but never move away. NetNewsWire has the best interface and is the easiest one to use, but it’s not the most beautiful (that compliment goes to NewsFire).

From the same people who developed NetNewWwire comes MarsEdit, which I use to post and edit articles on my blogs (Rosecantine and Muniwireless). Like Netnewswire, the interface is simple, the buttons are where you expect them to be, and you learn to use it in about 30 seconds. If you buy NetNewsWire, you get MarsEdit for free.

I tried Ecto, another application for posting articles on blogs, but I find it confusing. Too many buttons, too many choices. A lot of people love Ecto so this is a very personal thing.

Because I am on a Mac, Internet Explorer isn’t really an option. Microsoft has stopped developing IE for OS X (thank heavens). So Firefox is my browser of choice. I would recommend it for Windows users too.

VLC Media Player

Is that video in Quicktime, Windows media or Real Player format? Do you care? If you just want to look at videos and don’t care to become embroiled in the video format wars, download VLC. It’s free. It works very well and the developers update it frequently.

(with LaCie mobile firewire hard drive)

I do backups every day. It’s very simple with Super Duper. There are a lot of people who still don’t do daily backups (or floss their teeth everyday for that matter). Both are very important. And to have an incentive to back up daily, you need an application as easy to use as Super Duper. I use it with my mobile LaCie firewire hard drive. It’s so light you can easily carry it with you on all your travels. That means, yes, daily updates even when traveling. How sweet.