Useful Information Resources

Last update: Feb 19 2014 15:30 EDT

This is a periodically updated non-exhaustive list of links to resources (including hardware and software) over a variety of genres and interests. Listing here does not constitute endorsement nor warranty of fitness, but I have purchased and regularly use a number of the software packages mentioned below - some are indispensable. In many cases the items are multipurpose, so placing them in a single category is a bit arbitrary. Often there are advantages buying these applications directly from the developers rather than via the Mac App Store, in terms of features/sandboxing restrictions. Obvious applications (e.g. made by Apple itself) aren't listed.
 

Text & Code Editing

• Bare Bones BBEDIT for HTML, code and text editing [Mac App Store], @bbedit on Twitter
• Bare Bones TextWrangler "little brother" to BBEDIT, for those that only need a simpler & free editor [Mac App Store]
• Alexander Blach's Textastic HTML, code and text editor for Mac [Mac App Store], @Textastic on Twitter, also for iPad [iTunes Store] and iPhone [iTunes Store]
• The venerable SubEthaEdit for real-time simultaneous collaborative text editing

Writing

• Final Draft for scripts & screenplays, @finaldraftinc on Twitter, [Mac App Store], and their companion iOS apps [iTunes Store]
• Literature & Latte's Scrivener for novels, research papers & scripts, @scrivenerapp on Twitter, [Mac App Store]
• Literature & Latte's Scapple for mind-mapping & freeform text editing, [Mac App Store]
• Quote-Unquote's Highland to convert screenplays between PDF, FDX & Fountain format, @qapps on Twitter, [Mac App Store]
• LibreOffice for Word Processing, Spreadsheets & Presentations
• Matt Gemmell's Fiction Style Guide

Keyboards & Input Devices

• CODE keyboard available at WASD Keyboards

Desktop Automation & Productivity

• Smile Software's TextExpander, @SmileSoftware on Twitter, [Mac App Store], and their iOS version [iTunes Store]
• Running with Crayons Alfred, [Mac App Store] and the Powerpack
• George Brocklehurst's Choosy to open URLs in ad hoc browsers
• Unvetted: Sveinbjorn Thordarson's Platypus which creates application bundles from interpreted scripts, [GitHub]
• Matt Gemmell/instinctive code's Sticky Notifications, [Mac App Store]
• James Thomson's PCalc, @jamesthomson on Twitter, [Mac App Store] and the iOS version [iTunes Store]

Server Automation

• Ansible, [GitHub], @ansible on Twitter
• Puppet, @puppetlabs on Twitter
• Boxen for Puppet
• Chef, @getchefdotcom on Twitter

Continuous Integration

• Jenkins, @jenkinsci on Twitter
• JetBrains TeamCity, @jetbrains on Twitter

Server Monitoring

• Zabbix

Security

• AgileBits 1Password Password Manager, @1Password on Twitter & App.net, [Mac App Store], and their iOS version [iTunes Store]
• AgileBits Knox Encrypted Vaults
• Cloak VPN service, @getcloak on Twitter
• Karl von Randow's Charles Proxy for HTTP proxy & monitor & Reverse Proxy to view all HTTP & SSL/HTTPS traffic including iOS
• Electric Sheep Fencing's pfSense Firewall, @pfsense on Twitter
• Unvetted: Objective Development's Little Snitch, @littlesnitch on Twitter, @mmasser on App.net

REPO / SOURCE CONTROL

• Atlassian's SourceTree for Git
• fournova Software's Tower Git client for Mac, @gittower on Twitter

Diff

• Black Pixel's Kaleidoscope, @kaleidoscopeapp on Twitter

Disassembly & Debugging

• Hopper OS X Disassembler, @bSr43 on Twitter

Fonts

• DZ's Inconsolata-dz, @dz on Twitter
• Adobe's Source Code Pro (GitHub) & Source Sans Pro (GitHub)

Graphics

• Shiny Development's Status Magic for adding perfect status bars to iOS App Store screenshots, [Mac App Store]
• The Iconfactory's xScope for on-screen measuring & testing, @xscopeapp on Twitter, [Mac App Store]
• Glyphish iOS icons, @glyphish on Twitter

Localization & Translation

• Peer Assembly's Linguan for localizing Mac & iOS apps, [Mac App Store]
• Applingua's LinguaSwitch to quickly launch Mac apps in any available language, [Mac App Store]

Beta Testing & Distribution

• HockeyApp service, and Mac app, along with HockeyCoach for crash report management, @hockeyapp on Twitter & App.net

Mobile Development Previewers

• Bjango's Skala Preview, @bjango on Twitter & App.net, [Mac App Store] and companion iOS app [iTunes Store]
• Avatron's Air Display, [Mac App Store] and companion iOS app [iTunes Store]

Languages & IDEs

• Xamarin Studio for C# native Mac/iOS/Android/Windows, @xamarinhq on Twitter
• JetBrains AppCode for Objective C, IntelliJ IDEA for Java, RubyMine for Ruby & Rails +web, PyCharm for Python +web, @jetbrains on Twitter
• ActiveState's Komodo IDE for Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, HTML, CSS & JavaScript, and their Perl Dev Kit (PDK), or both as Pro Studio
• CoffeeScript, compiles to JavaScript
• LUA

Software Installers

• Qt Installer Framework Manual & gitorious Repo
• Flexera Software's InstallAnywhere & InstallShield
• Indigo Rose's Setup Factory & MSI Factory
• Nullsoft Scriptable Install System: NSIS
• Jordan Russell's Inno Setup (see also isskin for customizable skins, and InnoTools Downloader)

SSH/SFTP/FTP/VNC/RDP/Terminal

• VanDyke Software's SecureCRT OS X Terminal, SSH, Telnet, Serial
• VanDyke Software's SecureFX SFTP, SCP, FTP over SSL, & FTP
• Panic's Transmit FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV, [Mac App Store]
• Panic's Prompt SSH & Telnet for iOS, [iTunes Store]
• AppHug's Serial Tools Terminal Emulator, Protocol Analyzer & serial port monitor, [Mac App Store]
• Houdah Software's Type2Phone Virtual Bluetooth Keyboard, [Mac App Store]
• Secret Geometry's Cathode Vintage Terminal, [Mac App Store]
• Microsoft's Remote Desktop, RDP, [Mac App Store]
• Apple's Remote Desktop, [Mac App Store]

Backup & Sync

• Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper!
• Bombich Software's Carbon Copy Cloner, @bombichsoftware on Twitter
• bcpierce's Unison File Synchronizer

Dashboard

• Panic's Status Board, [iTunes Store]
• Sal Conigliaro's Apple Service Status (GitHub) for Panic's Status Board
• Status Board Widgets for Panic's Status Board
• Etosi's Telemetry Data Visualization, [iTunes Store], [Mac App Store], @telemetryapp on Twitter
• Unvetted: Leftronic, @LeftronicCo on Twitter

Database

• MySQL Workbench
• Thermal Core's Core Data Editor, [Mac App Store], @CocoaPimper on Twitter, @kienle on App.net

Cloud

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Microsoft Windows Azure, @windowsazure on Twitter
• OpenStack Cloud Software, Open source software for building private and public clouds

Hosting, Colocation & Domain Registration

• Mac Mini Colocation & Mac Pro Colocation, @macminicolo on Twitter
• pair Networks for Shared, VPS & Dedicated hosting
• pairNIC for Domain Name Registration

Customer Support / Ticketing / Tracking

• zendesk Help Desk, @zendesk on Twitter
• FogBugz Bug Tracking, @FogCreek on Twitter
• JetBrains YouTRACK Agile Issue Tracking & Project Tracking Tool, @jetbrains on Twitter

Communication, Instant Messaging, Collaboration

• Colloquy IRC client for Mac & iOS, [iTunes Store]
• Matt Wright's (unmaintained) MacIrssi IRC client (GitHub), @daagaak on Twitter
• Irssi text/terminal IRC client

Web/HTML IDE & Dev

• Realmac Software's RapidWeaver, @realmacsoftware on Twitter, [Mac App Store]
• Panic's Coda, @Panic on Twitter, [Mac App Store], and their iOS version [iTunes Store]
• Mike Mattozzi's Cocoa Rest Client (GitHub) for testing HTTP endpoints
• JetBrains PhpStorm for PHP +web, WebStorm JavaScript IDE +web, @jetbrains on Twitter

Virtualization

• VMware's VMware Fusion Pro

Mapping

• OpenStreetMap

Audio

• XLD lossless audio decoder & ripper
• Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro to record any audio
• Unsupported unmaintained The Levelator (which resolves to The Levelator on web.archive.org) which adjusts the audio levels within a podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next, @levelator on Twitter
• Audiobus to bring iOS audio apps together, @AudiobusApp on Twitter

Video

• VideoLAN's VLC Media Player

Email Clients, Servers & Tools

• Mozilla's Thunderbird email client
• University of Washington's Alpine text-based email client
• Dovecot Secure IMAP server
• Rick Sanders's IMAP Tools Perl scripts for sale

VoIP

• twilio for developer app integration, @twilio on Twitter
• les.net VoIP service from Canadian provider

Web Browsers

• Mozilla's Firefox
• Opera

Operating Systems

• Canonical's Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Server

Funding

• Kickstarter, @kickstarter on Twitter
• indiegogo, @Indiegogo on Twitter

Point of Sale (POS) / EFTPOS / Merchant / ecommerce / Storefront

• Vend, @vendhq on Twitter
• Shopify, @shopify on Twitter

Game Dev Engines & Frameworks

• Unity Technologies Unity, @unity3d on Twitter, and Unity Asset Store, @unityassetstore on Twitter
• Epic Games Unreal Engine
• Crytek's CryENGINE
• BitSquid's BitSquid Engine
• cocos2d-iphone framework for 2D games using Objective-C, for iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, OSX and Android, @cocos2d on Twitter

Game Dev Audio

• Firelight Technologies FMOD
• audiokinetic Wwise

Game Dev Graphics & Visuals

• Rad Game Tools Bink 2
• Donya Labs Simplygon, @simplygon on Twitter
• Allegorithmic Substance Designer, @Allegorithmic on Twitter
• Umbra Software Umbra 3, @umbrasoftware on Twitter
• Silicon Studio Yebis 2
• Geomerics Enlighten, @Geomerics on Twitter

Game Dev modeling, sculpting & rendering

• Autodesk's Maya, @Autodesk_ME on Twitter
• Blender
• Pixologic's ZBrush, @pixologic on Twitter

Game Dev Physics, Animation & A.I.

• Havok
• Ikinema Runtime, @ikinema on Twitter
• Autodesk's Gameware, @ADSKGameware on Twitter
• NaturalMotion's Morpheme & Euphoria, @NMGames on Twitter
• Nvidia's PhysX & APEX
• xaitment's XaitControl, @xaitTicker on Twitter

Game Dev Controllers

• tattiebogle OS X Xbox 360 Controller USB driver
• Unity InputManager mappings for Xbox 360 Controller
• Patrick Hogan's InControl [Unity Asset Store], [GitHub] cross-platform multi controller InputManager for Unity, @pbhogan on Twitter

Game Emulation

• OpenEmu, @openemu on Twitter
• MAME & MESS
• The Internet Archive Software Collection MESS and MAME, and Collection Search results
• Ultimarc Game Controls hardware
• Virtual Apple ][, @virtualapple on Twitter

Electronics / Hardware

• Toronto's HackLab.TO, @hacklabto on Twitter
• SD/SDHC Speed Class information
• Unvetted: Mixshop Toronto for RepRap & parts

Licensing, Trademarks, Copyright

• World Intellectual Property Organization
• Choose A License (OSS)
• Creative Commons, @creativecommons on Twitter

Books & reference materials

• The Pragmatic Programmers The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Jesse Freeman's Weekend Code Project: Unity's New 2D Workflow
• Marmoset's Basic Theory of Physically-Based Rendering

Videos & Slides

• GDC Vault in-depth design, technical and inspirational talks & slides from the influencers of the game development industry
• Steam Dev Days (YouTube) Steamworks Development

Tea

• Shoumei 寿眉