I have such a hard time roping in all the strands of tech know-how I’ve gathered since the days of Terrapin Station BBS (I wasn’t on it, but that’s where my mentor first took me to show me living creatures on my screen) and newsgroups and yes, AOL. Everything changed when my friend Nina wrote me a fan letter. I’d never gotten email from a stranger and what a stranger she was! She’s still a very close friend and she’s wearing quite an impressive interactive marketing crown.

I spent my first years on a Mac, then on a Kaypro II, then on some pre-windows MS-DOS thing, then back to Mac and then back again to Windows (up to and including Vista) and I finally tossed it all for my two Macs: my Intel PPC with expanded ram and my Powerbook.

I get really frustrated with Windows, but I’m thankful for the many paychecks I’ve received by knowing MS programs and how to troubleshoot Win-DOS. As in life, I prefer smooth sailing and pretty pictures, so I’ll stay with my Macs. I haven’t missed PC’s in the least, but just in case, I have Parallels–a flawless way to open my Quicken accounts (something Mac hasn’t gotten to, sort of like the graphics guy who keeps promising to go and have lunch with that nice girl in accounting).

So, in lieu of wrangliing, I wrote a super fast finder plug-in and got the names of all the apps on my iMac. I’m famiilar with all, proficient with many and can do cocktails with some. Of course there are a number of cloud or Web 2.0 apps I’ve spent a lot of time with, including WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook and numerous practical and diagnostic SEO tools.

I don’t like all of these, but I’ve found a nice way to carry them around as I go exploring the big, bad, beautiful web.

1Passwd
Address Book
Adobe Illustrator CS
Adobe ImageReady CS
Adobe InDesign CS
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop CS
Adobe Version Cue
AdWords Editor
Audacity
Audiocorder OSX
Automator
BannerZest Pro
Blendit Image Admin
ButtonBuilder
CanoScan Toolbox 4.1
Chess
ClamXav
Comic Life
CSSEdit
DivX Player
eFax Messenger
Fanurio
Firefox
Flickr Uploadr
Flip4Mac
FlySketch
Gawker
GIFfun
Google Desktop
Google Docs
Google Updater
Headliner2 Image Admin
iCal
iChat
iDupe
iDVD
iMovie HD
Iomega
iSync
iTunes
iVeZeen
iWatermark
iWeb
Linotype FontExplorer X
MacPilot
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8
Macromedia Extension Manager
MacTheRipper
Mactracker
Mail
Maintenance 3.7
Mark:Space Notebook
Microsoft AutoUpdate
Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Access
Microsoft Office 2004
Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft Sharepoint
Missing Sync for Windows Mobile
Movie Tools
MSN Messenger
NetNewsWire
PandoraJam
Parallels
Parallels Desktop
Photo Booth
PhotoStudio
Pic2Icon
Picasa Web Albums Uploader
Psi
QuickTime Player
RAGE MapDesign
Rank Tracker
RapidWeaver
RealPlayer
Roxio Toast Lite 6.1
RWmultitool Lite
RWThemeMiner
Safari
ScanGear CS 7.0X
Sherlock
SilverKeeper 1.1.4
SiteSucker
Skype
Slide
Snapz Pro X
Songbird
Start magicJack
Stickies
StreamRipperX
StuffIt 11
Taco HTML Edit
TechTool Deluxe
TextEdit
The New Yorker Launcher
The Unarchiver
ThemeBuilder
Thunderbird
Todos
VLC
Wacom
WhatSize
WireTap Studio
WMV Player
Yahoo! Messenger