My three killer apps:

1. Excel
2. Aqua Data Studio (I’m a DBA). This app rox. The company I work for has many different DB systems and this app can talk to them all. No need to install the client for each DB.
3. BBEdit

Without these three apps I am nothing.

Honorable Mention…. Quicksilver (Still learning but I lika alot)

Emacs is my killer app. I love how I can reprogram practically every aspect of it. I use it to publish my blog, keep my task list, do my mail, manage my contacts, sometimes even surf the Web. Not bad for something that’s officially just a text editor… ;)

I also totally, totally love Firefox, particularly with extensions like Greasemonkey. =)

I am a really techy user of Excel. I use a genetic algorithm add-in to doo all sorts of optiziation and regression work. For the genetic algorithm work I also use the frequency and histogram functions to calculate information theroretic values such as Shannon entropy and Mutual information for use in the genertic algorithm applications. These applications include stock picking, portfolio optimization chemical structure design, selection of the best training sets for self-organizing maps I also use a lot of neural network add-ins for Excel.

Flock. I’ve happily given up Camino, endo, and ecto… primarily because Flock runs so well on a 17” MacBook Pro.

I am new to GTD, first introduced to it here are 43 Folders, recently I picked up the book, GTD.

I know most of you are Mac Centric, but I have a Windows computer at work and home (although recently set up an Ubuntu Linux machine at home)

I would have to say categorically, hands down it would be Outlook. I know that many people frown on Outlook, but it is what my employer has us use. I sync up the Calender and Contacts to my PocketPC. Honestly, I like Outlook, but have not really used many other corporate email systems. 9 or so hours a day it is open.

Also, lately I use a Word based ToDo list that I am tweaking to my needs. Also, it’s not really an APP, but my flash drive goes everywhere with me and I keep any files that I need for projects.

I am a huge fan of excel as well as it used for many project at work, or more accurately parts of projects. I like to tweak the formatting.

Circusponies NoteBook. I live in a handful of notebooks. I have 2 for overall view on projects, where clipping snippets from mail/safari etc is priceless (set up GTD-style). Then I have one for each major project for keeping notes, etc.

I think that when you by habit try keyboard shortcuts from one app in another (with sometimes strange results), then you know the app is becoming an extension of yourself.

As a Linux programmer, my vote goes for:

1) Vim - coding, text editor 2) Gmail - stuff 3) Tomboy - GTD 4) Firefox - browser and WYSIWYG CSS Editor (the web developer toolbar is awesome)

Can’t believe nobody mentioned Tomboy. It’s the perfect app for lists, linking, project management, etc.

I’m going to have to agree with mwschmeer - I positively adore Mori. It’s all I need for all of my class notes (from both lecture and text), project and meeting notes/outlines, to do lists, etc. I also always have netnewswire and quicksilver open.

My vote would go to my favorite online gtd system: http://www.vitalist.com

Also, of course, Gmail. Thank god I don’t use outlook anymore!

Another vote for Smultron here - love the ability to save groups of text files as projects and easily navigate between them.

Can’t live without: Mail (with Mailtags) - Safari - Ical - Quicksilver - OOP w/ kGTD - Smultron - Textpander

Honorable mentions: Notlight - Textpander - Shrook

Entourage…PIM, e-mail, free form database, a tap on the shoulder…

Excel…money.

Stickies…a way station of sorts. If it’s worth keeping, then off to Entourage.

GraphicConverter…fast, stable and functional. I don’t need Photoshop and detest the silly, consumer-fied interface of apps like iPhoto.

Tinderbox, with an assist by Launchbar (every six months or so, I try Quicksilver, but invariably the key plugins that would be essential to me seem not to have been updated for the current version, and I get only shrugged shoulders in the forums…)

The Windows app EditPad Lite. It opens text files as tabs. All my GTD lists are plain text files, and I open them all up with EditPad, so I’ve got ‘em all in a nice organized row.

Mail Daylite + DMI (Daylite-Mail Integration) Freemind

My vote goes for Excel, though the Google spreadsheets look interesting.

For very long articles that I want to read, I like to split them up for ease of reading. I use NoteTab Pro, a versatile text editor. The article is copied to NoteTab - http://www.notetab.com - and then I use search and replace to add a delimiter between each paragraph. The text file can then be imported into Zoot - http://www.zootsoftware.com - using the Import Delimited Files option. I end up with a folder consisting of x items (x being the number of paragraphs). Then I can read the document paragraph by paragraph, and add annotations to the paragraph as desired.

mail tags + spotlight/smart folders

quicksilver (but don’t use it well enough)

fiddling with Devonthink Agent/Pro now. Has potential, needs to be simpler

My favourite is activecollab (http://activecollab.com). It definitely replaces my basecamp and backpack account. And it’s free.

Installed it with xampp on my flash usb disk. And I bring it anywhere. It functions as my notes, document and project management.

Also have it on my server, where I move any team task and project.

BeyondCompare from ScooterSoftware.com.

I make web sites (among other things) and frequently work away from the office. This includes posting web sites from the road. BeyondCompare lets me keep everything synchronized: web servers via FTP, laptop and the desktop when I come home again. Such a relief to have this worked out completely.

Thanks Scooter Software!

-k²

Ableton Live. Watching the correction of a lazy backbeat on the introductory videos a few years ago, I felt like a caveman seeing fire for the first time. I still laugh out loud sometimes when I’m using it, it’s so well-designed.

http://www.ableton.com/

Launcher Bar - I’ll echo some other people’s comments, but quicksilver just doesn’t do it for me. It’s slow and I hate the fact I need to set up triggers (or search contents of) to find things. Working with iTunes through quicksilver is such a mess compared to launchbar.

Devonthink Pro - I use this to store articles, class notes, project information, random notes, translation notes, todos, meeting notes, presentations and everything else. Features like auto classification, wiki style links, importing via the print menu and services, see also just make finding and searching my information so easy and I don’t have to spend a lot of time organizing it.

Backpack - I’ll admit I don’t use nearly all the functionality of backpack, but the reminders are worth every penny. 30 boxes, gcal just don’t compare. Their calendar isn’t bad and I’m using their pages functionality more and more to keep track of information that I need when I don’t have devonthink.

Vim & Textmate get a lot of use, NetNewsWire, iTunes, Proteus (I hate the email reminders in Adium that were added a while back)

my three killer apps are:

Quicksilver and TextMate (both via this site) and !/bin/sh. that is, homemade bash scripts. i have one TM project called “morning” in which I keep my morning messages (messages I write the evening before to remind myself of what I need to do the next day) and I have a script which archives them and opens the new message in a TM project, and opens my FlexTime (10+2)*5 Hack schedule…ready to roll for the day!’

I also have a TM project for each project. It’s like having a spread-out desktop for each thing I’m working on, or ever have worked on. It’s awesome.

uh, did this get posted?

my three killer apps are:

Quicksilver and TextMate (both via this site) and !/bin/sh. that is, homemade bash scripts. i have one TM project called “morning” in which I keep my morning messages (messages I write the evening before to remind myself of what I need to do the next day) and I have a script which archives them and opens the new message in a TM project, and opens my FlexTime (10+2)*5 Hack schedule…ready to roll for the day!’

I also have a TM project for each project. It’s like having a spread-out desktop for each thing I’m working on, or ever have worked on. It’s awesome.

okay, it did get posted, sorry.

I also wanted to add that I use a hand-synced combination of kGTD and the hPDA as used by Emory (described in his Emory’s LoFi HiFi White Paper.)

http://kvet.ch/pages/gtd-whitepaper-emory

kGTD good for capturing and maintaining backups (I can’t imagine having anything as important as my project lists only on paper), but the cards are just much easier to work off of and for capturing immediate input.

My killer app would have to be quicksilver. Its the first thing I install after I reformat one of my macs.

If i’m allowed a runner up it would have to be VLC. I am a video whore to the max and it is the most capable and elegant player by far.

Photoshop & Illustrator

Do rss feed readers count for? I spend most of my time with Awasu. Best i found.

Excel is an old favorite, but right now, I’d say my killer apps are:

• Firefox, mostly not the app itself, but all the web apps that run in it.
• Emacs, in which all my coding and text editing takes place
• The terminal, stretching the “app” concept a bit, including bash scripting, a whole range of little command-line utils, and python.

With that killer trio, I’m unstoppable. (I miss photoshop, though.)

• (g)Vim
• Firefox
• GMail
• Gregarius (gregarius.net) — its a server side RSS aggregator. I’ve tried Bloglines and friends and none of them met all my requirements.

devtodo, for text todo lists http://swapoff.org/DevTodo

vimoutliner, for all task lists and project mgmt, http://vimoutliner.org/

Emergent Task Tracker, from Michael Seah, of Printable CEO fame. http://davidseah.com/archives/2006/04/18/the-printable-ceo-iii-emergent-task-timing/