Over the last week or so I’ve decided, among lots of other, probably more important tasks, to have a good look at the applications and software I’m using. The main reason being that I’ve recently begun using quite a few different applications and want to see if I can cut down on the number of tools I use on a day-to-day basis.

I’m usually pretty judicious in my choice of tools, and I’m not the kind of geek who is constantly trying out the next big thing, but I do look for opportunities to make my life, and my work, easier. “Geek to Live” as Gina would say. In any case, I’m occasionally interested in what my peers and colleagues use to get their own work done, so I thought I’d share with you the things I use almost every day.

So what are those things? Well, here’s a quick list:

Apple Mail & iCal (w/Google Apps)
I use Mail for all my e-mail and it’s likely the application I use the most, and iCal for my main calendar. Both of these run on a Google Apps backend, which I’m pretty happy about. I’m not too impressed with how Google Calendar hooks up to iCal, especially the way I have to use it to view other’s calendars, but it works. I’m thinking about getting Backpack (from 37Signals) for the business as it has a shared calendar that looks pretty darn sweet.

Basecamp & Highrise
Speaking of 37signals, I’ve been using, and loving, Basecamp for years now. It’s simply the best project managment/collaboration tool around. And, trust me, I’ve tried many. I’m also a fan of Highrise, their contact management/CRM tool although I do use it quite a bit less than Basecamp.

Photoshop, OmniGraffle, Illustrator, InDesign, CSS Edit & Textmate
These are my primary design tools. I do most of my actual design work (aside from what I do on paper) in Photoshop. I actually use Photoshop occasionally to do even lower fidelity things like wireframing, the main reason being I simply work faster in Photoshop than I do in Omnigraffle.

While I don’t do much code these days, I’ve always been a fan of Textmate and CSS Edit is sublime.

iWork
iWork is awesome. I use Pages, Numbers and Keynote quite often. Pages is actually a really great word processor; certainly works well for my needs. Keynote is simply the best presentation software around, and Numbers is a surprisingly easy to use spreadsheet program.

I use Numbers to manage Blue Flavor’s resourcing. With very little know-how I was able to put together a pretty nice little spreadsheet that, while it takes some manual adjustment, works better than any other resourcing method I’ve tried.

Harvest
For the last year and a half or so we’ve been keeping track of our time with Harvest. It’s a great little application that works almost without a hitch. We’d tried a few different ways of time keeping, including a paper-based method but Harvest has clearly been the best I’ve come across. I’m a big fan.

Things
I’ve been playing with the hot, new Mac GTD application Things and I’m liking what I see. It’s really easy to pick up, and so far using it has been relatively painless. I’m going to hold my final judgement until they release the final product, I’m really interested to see how they handle delegation of tasks as that will likely decide if it’s a keeper or not. I need a better way to assign tasks to people.

Scrivener
Scrivener is a great notes/writing tool. It’s really lightweight, highly customizable and perfect for what it does: allow me to take notes and brainstorm freely.

OmniOutliner
I’ve been using OmniOutliner less and less now that I use Scrivener, but at times I still find it the best way to, well, outline something.

Mint.com
I’m pretty new to Mint but I’m loving it so far. I use it for both business and personal money management and find that it makes keeping track of my money as joyful as that can get. It really is an amazing application, I highly suggest checking it out if you have issues keeping tabs on your spending and finances.

Pulse
Pulse is another application I’m pretty new to. It’s a pretty straight-forward cash-flow application that shows great promise. Again, I’ve not used it much, but I’m finding it to be very useful in giving me an idea of how my cash is flowing. :)

Expression Engine
Expression Engine is the wonderful CMS that runs this site. As you might know, I’m somewhat of a CMS junkie, having tried just about every kind you can imagine at one point or another. While I’m still a fan of Movable Type and I’m very, very keen on the work we’re doing at Blue Flavor with Django, I think EE is probably my favorite for most things CMS related. It’s designed well, has power to spare, is very easy to learn (and more importantly, to teach) and is relatively affordable.

A few others

• Safari is my main browser.
• I use Sandy to remember things and give me reminders.
• We’re in the process of getting Blinksale up for invoicing. I’m excited about that.
• We use Campfire for impromptu and persistent company meetings. I find it a bit distracting, but it seems to be useful every now and again.
• I use Mint for web stats. It’s pretty killer.
• Wallet is a great piece of software that I’ve been using for quite awhile now to store passwords, serial numbers and such.
• I use Transmit quite a bit. It’s an FTP program.
• Linotype Font Explorer X manages my fonts.
• I use iPhoto to manage my photos, but have been looking at Aperture.

That’s about it. As you can see, when you sit down to think about the software and applications you use it can very quickly add up. Almost to the point of being overwhelming. Looking through all this I don’t see too much redundancy, but there are probably I few I could lose, or combine.