From the “Everyone loves this but you never seemed to get off your ass to try it yourself” files I bring you Growl. In and of itself it’s pretty innocuous—just an operating system alert widget. However, when you plug in all sorts of applications it keeps you from ⌘-Tabbing or space jumping all over the place to get alerts of incoming stuff. Alerts just pop up wherever you happen to be when “things happen.” Currently I’m monitoring:
- Mail.app
- iTunes
- Hardware
- CC.NET
In the past half hour I think I’ve increased my productivity twofold just because I’m not jumping to different spaces every time I get email.
Related, I’ve installed CC Menu to monitor all the freaking builds going on at work. This frees up a bit of space in my cramped RDC connection to my worktop as the monitor now runs in my menu bar and I can open the project window and move it off to the side on the secondary monitor. Sure, it might be easier to just work directly on the worktop but I’m just that committed to using my powerbook. Who says mac fans aren’t zealous?