N. SILVA  I got this program with MacHeist.

While it has a clever recipe import feature, it makes a lot of mistakes when identifying ingredients. "Kosher" is not an ingredient, darnit (it's "Kosher salt"). When a recipe calls for garlic cloves, I don't want to see "cloves" added to my shopping list. No matter how many times I corrected it, it never learned. I got tired of correcting every ingredient and so was never able to use the shopping list feature.

I have around 150 recipes in Yojimbo, but the process of importing them and correcting the ingredients took so long that I gave up.

The program also caused me to lose data in another program, TextMate, because of its Services shortcut key (Shift-Cmd-R). I accidentally pressed that key combination while TextMate had a file dialog open. SousChef appeared unexpectedly and TextMate locked up.

If I was starting a new recipe library from scratch, I would probably give SousChef another try. I liked the large-print display that I could easily read when my computer was sitting on the other side of the kitchen. The recipe search function was intriguing. It was fun to see what recipes other people have in their libraries (of course you can turn off sharing if you want to). I could not get the speech recognition to work, but I think that is a problem with my Mac, not with SousChef. It's a great idea if it works as advertised.  
(Version 1.1)

N. SILVA  The installation procedure is bizarre. It prompts you for the folder where you want to install the application, and then asks if you want to "create a desktop icon."

I'm only being slightly facetious here: I realize this is normal behavior on Windows, but it is weird and disconcerting on the Mac. I've never seen a Mac installer of this type, and it makes me worry that the application developer doesn't know what he's doing and/or could be modifying things on my system that he shouldn't be.  
(Version 3.5)

N. SILVA  Very nice remote desktop client. In some ways it's superior to the Windows version. For example, with the Mac RDC client, you can connect to a server's console by adding "/CONSOLE" to the end of the computer name, something that requires editing a config file on the Windows side.

Some users may still prefer CoRD, however, because of the way that the Microsoft client handles saved connections. (The preferences dialog is used to change settings in a way that's hard to explain and often has me overwriting saved connections with the wrong settings.)

The other thing that could be improved is the Dock display. If you're connected to several servers, it's hard to tell which Dock icon represents which server. The server name is on the icon, but it's often too tiny to see.  
(Version 2.0)

N. SILVA  The "forward local disks" option is in the nightly builds, on the developer's web site at: http://cord.sourceforge.net/development.html  
(Version 0.4.3)

N. SILVA  I think it's great that flash now supports HD video but I've been having problems with version 9.0.115. Specifically, when I visit Adobe's web site (adobe.com) it will lock up Safari or Firefox. If I disable Flash I can visit their web site so I am pretty sure this plugin is causing it. It must be conflicting with something else installed on my computer, although I have no idea what.  
(Version 9.0.115)

N. SILVA  This is a really nice RSS reader.

When I monitored hundreds of feeds NetNewsWire was the best. Now that I’ve trimmed down to a few dozen I want something lighter.

What it does best is give me a broad overview of my feeds. This saves time. The inline summaries are well-designed and compact (compare with Vienna where each article in unified mode is huge). I can see article lists without using disclosure triangles (ahem, endo) and articles are grouped by feed, unlike those readers that try to look like e-mail programs.

Its closest competitor would be NewsFire. If you like NewsFire take a look at NewsLife and see what you think.

I’ve had two problems: Podcast enclosures won’t download and it won’t refresh feeds when I wake my computer. Given this is a 1.0 product that’s not too bad.  
(Version 1.0)

N. SILVA  Outstanding and fully-featured LDAP browser. While it's still in development, it is already very usable. I am using it to browse an Active Directory and to make minor edits.  
(Version 0.8)

N. SILVA  This beats Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection by a mile. The new features in the latest version make it even better. I'm especially happy about support for connecting to the console session (can be done in Microsoft RDC, but only by manually editing the .rdc file). The new drawer interface and ability to split sessions into separate windows is nice.  
(Version 0.4.1)

N. SILVA  My wife loves this program. No, she doesn't use it... I do. For the first time I can lay in bed and write code without keeping her awake. :-)  
(Version 1.0)

N. SILVA  I liked Quicksilver but it kept dying and I would have to restart it several times a day.

So now I'm trying Butler and it can do everything that I was doing with Quicksilver, including custom-defined web searches, and indexing various document folders that I need to quickly reference.

Although other users (below) report that Butler is slow, for me it works just as fast, if not faster, than Quicksilver. I'm using a MacBook Pro with 2 GB RAM.  
(Version 4.1.2)

N. SILVA  Extremely unsatisfying application. You don't need this. For most people, Preview does a better job.

I finally managed to turn off the auto update functionality (seems every time I want to use the program it wants to run a lengthy update).

The final straw was when it kept inserting something called AdobeResourceSynchronizer into my Login Items. Even if I delete it from the Login items it keeps re-adding it like some kind of f---ing Windows program that thinks it owns my computer.

Bye bye, Adobe Reader.  
(Version 8.0)

N. SILVA  Terrific little utility. Using this gives you several advantages:

1. Bluetooth can stay off when you're not using it, which preserves battery power.

2. You can sync to your phone with one click. Even though it's not hard to start iSync and click the button, you’ll be surprised how much more often you sync when it gets this easy.

3. You don’t need to clutter your dock with another icon; iSyncIt lives in the menu bar.

Apple’s own iSync offers a menu bar item too, but it does not reliably sync a Bluetooth phone — in particular, if you are not using .Mac syncing and Apple iSync is not open at the time, then it doesn't work.

That’s why you need this application, iSyncIt. It will enable Bluetooth, launch iSync, sync, quit iSync and disable Bluetooth. (If you want, you can turn off the feature that enables/disables Bluetooth.)  
(Version 0.9)

N. SILVA  Very nice web browser based on the WebKit engine. I would describe it as "Safari Pro".

I was a long time Safari user but switched to OmniWeb because of its ad blocking capabilities (to block ads in Safari I would have to install an Input Manager). Although not as easy to use as the Firefox ad-block extension, the capabilities are just as robust.

I love the tabs implementation, which shows a mini-screenshot of each tab in the side pane, along with a loading status indicator for each one.

Since OmniWeb is based on WebKit it works with any site that works in Safari (the vast majority of web sites). The only site where I had a problem was reddit.com, which wouldn't let me sign in, but this has been fixed in the latest release.

If OmniWeb has one shortcoming it would be bookmark management. The bookmarks manager resets to its default view when you open it, instead of remembering what folder was open last time. It's also more difficult than it should be to export bookmarks, because you can't drag folders out of the bookmark manager.

Overall I would not hesitate to recommend OmniWeb to other Mac users.  
(Version 5.5.1)

N. SILVA  Reliable and well-designed information manager.

I use Yojimbo to keep copies of web pages, documentation of projects I am working on, product reviews, and recipes -- to my surprise it's become our main recipe manager.

The developers are responsive. I filed several bug reports against an earlier version and got useful replies each time (and the bugs were fixed in the latest update).

I don't use the password support, which is a little too restrictive for me (I use an encrypted DMG file). And I wish Yojimbo supported more file formats: I'd like to drag Excel documents into it, and complex Word documents look strange.  
(Version 1.3)

N. SILVA  This is the nicest timer application I have found. It's easy to use and has a very polished interface, yet there's room for improvement.

Recent versions seem to be getting bloated. The application is 21.1 MB -- seems like a lot for a timer.

A more serious complaint is that sometimes instead of playing the alarm sound it puts up a dialog box asking me to locate GrowlHelperApp. I've missed several alarms because of this! (I don't have Growl installed nor is it enabled in Minuteur's prefs.) This wasn't a problem in earlier versions.

For now, I'm sticking with Minuteur, but if something better comes along I'd consider switching.  
(Version 4.7.2)

N. SILVA  The 3.0 beta is really great! My company paid $199 for a VPN Tracker Pro license and I'm ditching it for this.

My favorite feature is the menubar item for controlling the VPN connection. You can quit the IPSecuritas application (freeing up space on your Dock) and still control the VPN.

This application is for connecting to IPSec VPNs. If your company uses PPTP or L2TP-over-IPSec this isn't for you.

Pros:

* Loads and connects faster than VPN Tracker Pro

* Native Intel application (VPN Tracker emphasizes that they support the Intel platform, but it is still a PowerPC application)

* Menubar item to control VPN status

* Dashboard widget to control VPN status

* Greatly improved configuration interface since the last version

* Can see multiple remote subnets (new since the last version)

Cons:

* There wasn't a pre-defined profile for my company's VPN. I had to play with the options to find the combination that works.

* There's no help available in the beta.  
(Version 3.0b14)