MacAppZone

11 Applications for the Freelancer

April 8th, 2009 by Erik Bernskiold

As a Freelancer the time is valuable. Luckily there are loads of apps available that will help you get more efficient with your time whether it is managing things to do or actually doing the work that you do. Check out the list below for some must-have applications as a freelancer.

 

Adobe Creative Suite 4

The Adobe suite has long been the premiere choice for graphic designers all over the world. With applications like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Flash it makes perfect sense for any freelancer to actually get this suite from the start. You just won’t find a better suite than this!

 

• Developer: Adobe
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11-10.5.4
• Price: from $999 (Web Standard)

 

Things

Things is a GTD (Getting Things Done) application that allows you to quickly and easily insert items that you have to do. You can sort these items either in projects or in areas of responsibility, which makes for very smart sorting. In addition you can also tag your items, opening the way for a very organized life.

Things is also available on the iPhone ($9.99 in the App Store) so you can have a complete integration and have your to-do list available to you from wherever and keep your mobile and desktop lists in sync!

• Developer: Cultured Code
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
• Price: $49.95

 

Scrivener

Anyone that is doing writing projects will benefit from Scrivener, an application that lets you write in a very simple and organized way. You can save research materials into a separate binder in the document while having the drafts in another separate binder, still within the document. A document acts as a master binder, with both research and drafts folders available. You can group and create advance hierarchies of folders inside of these binders. Perfect way to organize a big writing project and help you write with ease.

• Developer: Literature and Latte
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• Price: $39.95

 

Billings

Keeping track of your time is important, especially as a freelancer. If you don’t know how much time you’ve worked on a project, chances are you won’t be getting paid as you should. Billings is a superb time-tracking application that lets you keep track of time and money. You can create professional invoices directly from the application and choose to print or mail them to the client. Clients are imported right from a special group in your address book.

• Developer: Marketcircle
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
• Price: $39.95

 

Cyberduck

With a website you will need to send files up and down through FTP. Chances are after you’ve shelled out with all the money for the apps so far that budget is getting a little tight! What is better than this really nice and free FTP application, Cyberduck. Using Cyberduck you can save and bookmark FTP connections as well as easily and simply drag-and-drop upload and download files. All you would expect in an FTP client really.

• Developer: Cyberduck
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• Price: Free

 

Coda

For doing web development and coding work, nothing really beats Coda. It’s a simple to use application with support for many coding languages. With features such as auto-tag-complete and a built in FTP client that works based on sites you set up and develop, Coda is a smart solution that is really powerful.

• Developer: Panic Software
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• Price: $99

 

Fontcase

After a while it is inevitable that you’ve built up quite a large font library. However, having all your fonts load when you start up any application that draws access to your font list can make the applications sluggish. Plus, as your collection grows, you might not be able to keep track in your head on exactly which font is which. Enter Fontcase, an easy to use, visually pleasing application that helps you manage your font library. Turn on and off fonts really quickly with the click of a button and see previews of the fonts you have, quickly and easily.

• Developer: Bohemian Coding
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
• Price: $56

 

Skype

Communication is an important part of the freelancer’s day and accepting calls is however much we want to avoid it, unavoidable. It is cheap and easy to set-up an online number through Skype and then be able to take incoming calls, right at your computer. Of course you can also call other Skype users for free or chat with them using regular text chat. It’s essentially much more powerful than the old MSN protocol.

• Developer: Skype
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
• Price: Free

 

Dropbox

By using Dropbox you can quickly share and upload files from your computer to the cloud (the internet). You can then just send a link to the person you want to share the file with, or if you just want to download it on another computer. Dropbox provides a free 2GB space account that you can upload to, simply by dragging a file to the dropbox it creates on your computer.

• Developer: Dropbox
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• Price: Free

 

GridIron Flow

My latest love is Flow from GridIron Software. It is one really powerful application that tracks the files you work with. For example, if you start with a jpeg photo, place it into a Photoshop document, then you save the Photoshop document as a pdf and import that into InDesign to make a book, Flow will track that entire file process and allow you to see in all places the jpeg (in this example) is being used, even if there are more flows than just the one as in the example.

• Developer: GridIron Software
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 or later
• Price: $299

 

SpamSieve

How many spam emails do you get a day? Hundreds? Tousands? Luckily there are sophisticated algorithms that will help to clean up your inbox. SpamSieve does a really good job with this. Just go through the steps provided to train the software on what is good email and what is bad email and it will then automatically fierthrough all incoming email and only display the good stuff!

• Developer: C-Command Software
• Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• Price: $30