4 More Free Tools To Make Mac Life Easy. Or, Easier.

More free Mac tools. I’m on a roll. Time is running out on the Mac360 Value Vixen™ and I have to find the best free Mac utilities before baby #2 shows up.

After scouring the web, and dinking around with more freeware than Paris Hilton, I’ve come up with 4 more free tools to make your Mac life worth living.

Three of these utilities are nifty, crafty, and handy. That sounds like three of the 21st century Seven Dwarves. Or, is it dwarfs? The 4th utility is actually decent, even though it came from the Windows world first.

What makes a Mac software developer want to create and update a free application? Pride? Ego? Education? Love for humanity? Digital delirium? Whatever it is it is worthwhile for those of us willing to take a leap of faith.

Faith? Yes. A freeware Mac utility that works today may not work tomorrow, so one of our preferences at Mac360 is to look for utilities and tools and applications that have a fair chance of being around next week. If not longer.

As always, our primary preference for selection is simple: Will I use it on my Mac? Will I recommend it to my neighbor? Three of the four pass the test. The fourth is a matter of taste, as you’ll see below.

#1 - EasyFind
We haven’t been as pleasant to DEVON Technologies as we would like, but their freeware applications deserve more than a passing nod.

EasyFind is a helpmate for Mac OS X’s Spotlight. Spotlight indexes. EasyFind, well, it finds without indexing all the files on your Mac. This is a neat tool for anyone who does not have an Intel Mac yet.

What you get with EasyFind is a quick way to enhance the search for files on your Mac. Very handy is the way EasyFind shows files it found. Each gets a separate column. It even finds those pesky, hard-to-find invisible files and files inside application packages.

#2 - FontDoc
How many fonts do you have on your Mac? What Mac tool do you use to sort through them all? Do you run some fonts, but not others?

So many font questions, and so few answers. The Mac’s FontBook is OK for a quick look, but I’ve never liked how it managed fonts, or displayed fonts, or let me print fonts. That’s what FontDoc does. It lets you print fonts.

What you get is a rich text document which has the selected font, which you can then print. This is especially handy if you love to collect fonts in a paper binder. Or, not. Unfortunately, FontDoc doesn’t really “doctor” anything, which is what you expect of the name, right?

Then again, western gunslinger Doc Holliday didn’t do much doctoring on the victims he gunned down, either.

#2 - Jing
As opposed to “bling” Jing has the look of bling, for Mac or Windows.

Basically, Jing is a little utility that sits on your Mac, always running, always waiting, never asking for a raise or more CPU cycles, until you need something.

Jing captures screen images on your Mac. Jing captures video of what you do on your Mac. Jing makes it easy to share the screen images and captured video with others.

Think of it as the video Jing bling, or, as a new way to converse with your family and friends. There’s face-to-face, telephone, internet chat, email, and Jing.

Jing is trying to become a verb. As in, ”Jing me, honey.” Or, as in, ”Let me Jing you with my new ideas.” That kind of Jing.

#1 - FileZilla
All computers have too many files. That’s because hard drives are so big we never throw anything away. One can take the easy way, and do nothing. Or, take the difficult road, and actually organize files and delete unnecessary files, or use FileZilla and FTP files to who knows where.

FileZilla is an FTP utility, perfect for uploading Mac files, or Windows files to a server. FileZilla works very well, but looks awful. Think of the ugliest Windows utility you ever saw, multiply times three, and you get FileZilla.

But it works very well, especially after the nausea passes the first time you use it. If FileZilla was a woman, she’d be a two-bagger. You know, in case the first bag broke.

Got a favorite Mac utility that didn’t cost your a dime or a nickel or less than a penny? Share your love and experience with other Mac360 readers in the Comments section below. Seriously. We love your feedback. And I get 10-cents for every positive comment.

Off Topic Note: Have you ever noticed how much Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” television commercials remind you of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote? Seriously.