Needing no actual application introduction here lemme share some thoughts from the jump to Skype 5.0 non beta from the previous beta build.

I actually made the jump into Skype 5 Beta a few months back and have slowly appreciated the new bolder unified look. Undoubtedly the initial Beta look was a screen hog and had too much space wasted in terms of visual design. This was even more painful in the chat screen window where it was just glaringly white all over the place. That was finally remedied by a few intrepid programers who figured out how to install custom themes for the chat window screen, called "styles". Since then I haven taken a liking toward a chat style called "Simple", I'd share the link where I got it but I can't remember. Nevertheless I was happy to see that after upgrading Skype, my chat style still stayed the same, that and there were drastic improvements to all that extra space the whole Mac community was clamoring about on beta. Over all the unified interface may take some time to adapt to but presents a better user experience in the long run, that's from personal experience.

Too bad they had removed the groups video calling on the free version (it was free for a short while when Skype was on Beta). However until Google Voice releases an official desktop application (I assume they have something in the works) Skype will be the king of voip communications. If you haven't already downloaded it for your Mac, get it here.

Note: This list is by no stretch of the imagination supposed to be perceived as a comprehensive review. It is meant to introduce you to some nifty apps that I feel would make working on your computers a better place. Included in this write ups are insights on how I regularly use the apps and how they have helped me work better and more efficiently.

Alfred, like in batman lore is the ultimate servant. Ask and it will be launched. Lose something? Activate Alfred and type "Find " followed by the file name or file type you are looking for and it will find it for you, hit enter and it will show you where the file is in a finder box. Admittedly I never gave the built in search feature for Mac, called Spotlight, enough use to say that Alfred is way better than Spotlight. What I can say though is that since using Alfred I have never found a need to use Spotlight ever again.

I have to admit I was skeptical at first, since it should theoretically work just like spotlight does. But it's the little things that really make it shine. small stuff like using Alfred to initiate an online search on Google or Amazon. There are other cool stuff I've read it could do as well like add a todo list item without needing to launch OmniFocus.

Alfred is available both online and the Mac App Store totally free, with an option for premium features if you want more functionality.

UPDATE: The guys over at Mac.AppStorm enumerates here why Alfred is one of the coolest Apps around.

Note: This list is by no stretch of the imagination supposed to be perceived as a comprehensive review. It is meant to introduce you to some nifty apps that I feel would make working on your computers a better place. Included in this write ups are insights on how I regularly use the apps and how they have helped me work better and more efficiently.

To get the ball rolling let me first say that the presentation order of any of my 50 essential apps have nothing to do with how cool they are. It just so happens that I felt like writing about them when I was thinking of apps to include in this list. This list is by no stretch of the imagination supposed to be perceived as a comprehensive review. It is meant to introduce you to some nifty apps that I feel would make working on your computers a better place. Included in this write ups are insights on how I regularly use the apps and how they have helped me work better and more efficiently.

So to get started off with this list, we have dropbox. Quite like Posterous itself, it takes away all the pain of thinking and just works. The simplicity of the app almost makes you forget how important it truly is. For the average user needing an online back up system this is it. You set it up once on each computer and you're done. It just work, it does everything on it's own and all you need to do is just drop things into it.

Setting it up is not rocket science either but still a little understanding would be appreciated to get the ball rolling. I set this up on my dad's computer so that we could easily share files, and I could work freely on my own computer without needing his to work on some of his documents, and it's never let us down yet. The auto-syncing feature is killer and takes away the pain of teaching people how to access shared stuff over and over again. After a year of being spoilt by dropbox I honestly can't go back to carrying a thumb drive with me anymore. Definitely an easy one to include in this list and a good one to start off the list with.

Inspired by a slew of daily feeds that I rummage through each day, one with a very similar title, I thought this would be a good start for a regular more cohesive group of posts to get me going. There are tons of lists out there and anyone can go ahead and access them all after a quick google search, but a lot of them have apps, that while noteworthy, are of absolutely no use for me. As I mentioned before I'm no coding guru, not even good enough to be considered a novice, probably more like a spelunker hopelessly lost in code, lol. So why 50? Well it looks better than 51. Because I have no idea how soon I can complete this list, my goal therefore was to at least have one entry on this topic/tag per week. And since 1 we are already 1 week into 2011....well you get the point, do the math.

This post will not contain any of the 50 I will write about. Rather, treat this as an introductory post to the reviews that follow. Understand that this list will only contain apps that I have used or am using on a daily basis, since that what makes an app essential for me to get things done. So no need to flame if I skip your favorite text/CSS editor. I use Cyberduck for my FTP needs when I was working on my Wordpress site, but that wouldn't count as an essential "everyday" app either. The list will contain both free and paid apps, and definitely not limited to the growing Mac App Store. Although I don't strictly use 50+ apps a day this list will contain the one's that I feel from my workflow would be useful to the average...and maybe slightly above average user.  I will probably write about other apps in this blog but they don't necessarily have to be included in this list either.