A Dozen Free Mac OSX Applications I Couldn’t Live Without -part 7

Growl

Today I am going to describe an application that isn't very useful, but as we all know knowledge is power...

The sole purpose of this little application is to keep you informed about the status of certain applications and/or hardware.

It posts messages on your desktop so you don’t have to switch between active programs.

Growl offers a lot of control on how the messages are displayed and also about the content of these messages. 

Growl comes as a preference pane and can be shown in the menu bar as an option.

Applications who (can) make use of Growl are amongst others: Mail, Safari, Toast, Cyberduck and many others.

A Dozen Free Mac OSX Applications I Couldn’t Live Without -part 6

FileSync + DSW


Today I want to talk about a software combo I found to be very useful. The tag-team I am referring to is Do Something When and FileSync.

FileSync lets you synchronize two (or multiple) folders with each other. It’s really easy to use. 
Just use the ‘Add’ button to create a sync rule and then press ‘Sync’ to start your synchronization. A Progress window will open and keeps you informed of the files that are being treated.

DSW (Do Something When) on the other hand is a preference pane that, once loaded, will do something when a certain rule applies. You can trigger your self-made rules by mounting/unmounting volumes (drives) or launching/quitting applications.

In my setup when I insert a specific USB Key it will load File Sync. This way I can easily make a synchronization of my professional folders and files when I want it. If I don’t feel like synching, I just press ‘Quit’ in FileSync.

DSW can be downloaded here and FileSync here.