David's Top Shareware and Freeware Picks for New Mac Users

Previously I wrote about what makes a programs a shareware or freeware application and why they should be of interest to you. Now let's take a look at a few of my favorites, which also happen to be some of the most popular and best reviewed apps out there.

Adium - Multiple Network Instant Messaging - FREE
If you don't need iChat's voice and video chat features, Adium is simply the best instant messenger client that you can get. It supports a wide variety of services, including AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, Jabber (with special support for Gtalk), and many others. If you have multiple IM accounts (as I do), this is a godsend simply for the fact that you can use one program for all of your instant messaging needs.

There is an immense body of extensions that you can download; most of them simply change Adium's look and feel, though some add new functionality such as adding other protocols to the app. My favorite? A plugin that replaces the default Dock icon with a picture of Hobbes from Calvin & Hobbes. Adium is based on libpurple, which was originally created for the popular Windows chat client Pidgin. If you've used Pidgin on Windows, Adium duplicates much of the same functionality.

There are some caveats, however. As mentioned above, there is no voice or video chat. Also, there are some issues with file transfers using Adium—they may be slow or not work at all. But most issues are constantly worked out over time, and improvements are continually being made.

Delicious Library - Visual Library Cataloging - $40
If you're like me, you have a large collection of books and you frequently lend them out to your friends. Faithful use of the Apple Design Award-winning Delicious Library helps ensure that you get your books back, and that you'll never forget which books you own. Not only that, but it provides a great way to visualize your library at a glance.

One of the coolest features of this app is the iSight support: if you have an iSight, all you need to do in order to add a book to your Delicious Library is to hold up the bar code to your iSight (the one on the book, not the sticker many bookstores put on for their own inventory management). If Delicious Library can read the bar code (and it can, well over 99% of the time), it will try to look up details such as the title and author on Amazon.com. If not, you can enter the ISBN number with the keyboard or enter details yourself.

Once in your library, you can enter your own personal review, assign a rating from zero to five stars, make a note of its location in your physical library, and check it out to person by dragging it straight to their name in a list of borrowers.

Delicious Library 2.0 should ship on the same date as Leopard, and Wil Shipley (developer and CEO of Delicious Monster) has promised two things: that Delicious Library 2.0 will be awesome (DL 2.0 is already an Apple Design Award winner and hasn't even been released yet!), and that it will require Leopard to run. Please remember that Delicious Library is limited to twenty-five items in its library until you pay the $40 license fee. This makes trying it out a no-brainer.

Firefox - Web Browser - FREE
Firefox is one of the crown jewels of open source software development. Many of those "in the know" swear it's the best browser on Windows, and many who use it on Mac OS X swear by it as well. I personally use Safari for most of my web browsing needs, but when it comes to writing web software and web pages, Firefox has no competition. There are thousands of extensions to Firefox available, some of which merely change the look of the program, and others of which add useful functionality. My personal favorite is one called "Web Developer" which has many helpful aids to those writing web pages.

Firefox is also an excellent "second browser" in my experience, because some Web pages that still won't load in Safari will work just fine with Firefox. Particularly useful is the fact that Firefox will automatically load your bookmarks from Safari. And some features in Safari 3, such as the ability to reload your web pages in the event that your browser crashes, were available in Firefox first.

VLC Media Player - FREE
As good as QuickTime Player is, there are still some types of video files that it just can't play—AVIs are a particular cause of frustration. In these cases, VLC is indispensable as it plays just about any video file that you can throw at it. The only video file that has ever given it trouble is video that has been encrypted with Microsoft's Windows Media digital rights management.

As with Safari and Firefox, full-screen playback was available in VLC before it was made available in the free version of QuickTime Player. MPlayer is a competing video player that is also quite good, though I have always personally preferred VLC. Expect the upcoming review of VLC to also include MPlayer because both are worthy of recommendation.

Have you found some great Shareware and Freeware apps? Let us know in the Comments section below!

DIG DEEPER

Delicious Library

Adium

Firefox

Favorite Firefox Add-ons  

VLC Media Player

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