Compatible platforms: v1 is compatible with 10.4; v1.1 is compatible with 10.5 & up. (Take care to grab the right one for your system.)

Version highlighted in this post: 1.1.3

AppTrap is as close to the PC’s wonderful Revo Uninstaller as you’ll find on the Mac. Generally, programs uninstall pretty easily and without much hassle under OS X. But even on the Mac, there are some stubborn programs that refuse to remove all their preferences and settings files when uninstalled. That’s where AppTrap comes in.

After installing AppTrap, the only trace of it you’ll see on a daily basis is its entry in the Mac OS preferences pane. Even if you open it, though, you won’t find much to tweak or adjust because there’s really not a lot to the program.

The power of AppTrap comes whenever you decide to uninstall a program by dragging it to the trash can.  Whenever you do, an AppTrap dialog box will pop up and ask if you’d like to remove all the files associated with the program as well. Saying yes will clean out all traces of the program (except, of course, the files you created and saved).

AppTrap, in my mind, is as close to a “must have” utility as it gets for Mac owners (just like Revo uninstaller is for the PC). It’s lightweight, completely unobtrusive, and works extremely well. What’s not to love?

Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 0.6

Portable version: Available at the page linked above. Just make sure to grab file (toward the bottom of the blog entry) that says “Texter Executable.” Throw it on your USB drive and you’re good to go.

If you’re the type who obsesses over shortcut keys and has people shaking their heads whenever they watch you use your computer without touching your mouse, text substitution app Texter is for you.

Texter is built for those efficiency-minded folks who find themselves typing out the same set of info over and over. The easiest way to understand how it works is through a simple example.

Let’s say you find yourself typing your postal address often. First, you’d type your full address into the large box seen in the above screenshot. Then, in the ‘Hotstring” field, you’ll want to define the trigger word to be something you’d never otherwise type. Let’s go with ‘addy’ for this example. “Trigger” tells Texter which action or key stroke will kick it into action. We’ll go with ‘Space’ here.

Now, anytime you type ‘addy’, irrespective of what program you’re working in, as soon as you hit the spacebar after typing a-d-d-y, your address (formatted just the way you entered it into Texter will magically replace the word ‘addy’.

The program is actually much more powerful than just the simple example highlighted here, but our example is how you’ll use the program most of the time. For more details on the advanced uses of Texter, be sure to check out its explanation at Lifehacker. (Lifehacker editor Adam Pash is the person behind the app.) In addition to a well-written description of Texter, the page also contains a couple of great videos that show the program in action.

Compatible platforms: 10.3.9 (Panther with updates to .9 version) & up

Version highlighted in this post: 2.0

OS X has a great built-in utility for extracting and making basic archive files. You’ve probably used it, but may not have ever noticed it since it’s so tightly integrated into the OS. It’s called BOM Archive Helper. But if your needs go beyond the basics of standard zip files and the like, and you find yourself working with file types like RAR that allow spanning across multiple volumes, and 7z (7-zip) files that have great compression ratios, you’ll quickly hit BOM Archive Helper’s limits.

Fortunately, Apple created The Unarchiver and is offering it up absolutely free. Rather than run through the nice, big list of all the file types The Unarchiver handles, I’ll let the screenshot speak for itself.

That’s an incredible list. A list so thorough that I’d rank The Unarchiver’s capabilities right up there with the best PC archival programs (e.g. 7-Zip and PeaZip).

Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 2.5.0.0

If you find yourself creating or burning a lot of CD/DVD images, ditch your big, clunky burning suite and load up ImgBurn.

The beauty of ImgBurn is in its utter simplicity. It’s made for one purpose, and it absolutely excels at what it does. The screenshot alone almost says it all.

What you see above is pretty much the entire overview of the program’s capabilities. Once you click into one of the functions, you’ll get a dialog that lets you tweak the burn speed and a few little things, but overall, it’s really simple, straightforward, and fast.

One of the big benefits of ImgBurn is that it’s compatible with a wider array of image file formats than most burning suites out there. Some of the biggies are: .iso, .nrg, and .bin/.cue. But there are a ton of the more esoteric formats supported, as well. To see them all, just click on “Write image file to disc,” then browse for a file (the folder with a magnifying glass icon), and hit the file types drop down box.

Compatible platforms: 10.3 (Panther) & up

Version highlighted in this post: 1.1.2

Pac Man. For your Mac. For free. Is any more explanation really needed?

Pac the Man X is an award-winning Pac Man clone. It’s an absolute dead-ringer for the original as far as layout and gameplay go, but the graphics have received a nice bit of tinkering to give them a bit of a beveled and gradiated effect.

If you cut your teeth on the beloved, classic 80s game, you’ll be right at home with this awesome implementation.

Even my long-winded self can’t add much more than that!

Compatible platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 3.6

Portable version: Available at http://portableapps.com/apps/office/pdftk_builder_portable

PDFTK is a utility that allows users to manipulate PDF files in all kinds of clever ways. Unfortunately, it’s a command-line tool that’s just not user-friendly enough for most people. Fortunately, that’s where PDFTK Builder comes in. It takes the command-line tool and straps a graphical front-end on it, making it nice and easy for just about anybody to use.

As you can see from the screenshot, there are four things PDFTK Builder specializes in:

Collate–Allows you to combine, reorder, and remove pages of two or more PDFs. Once you have this function, you’ll probably be surprised just how often it comes in handy

Split–Lets you take a single PDF and break it up however you want

Background/Stamp–Background works a lot like a watermark. The only tricky thing is that the background image you’re using also has to be a PDF file. Once you do the background operation, it’ll place that image on every page in the target document. The stamp operation works similarly, but instead of being in the background (like a watermark), it places the image on top of whatever is already on each page of the target PDF.

Rotate–Lets you rotate one or a range of pages so whenever the PDF is pulled up in a viewer, its pages will be in the right aspect.

One other function that PDFTK gives you that Acrobat is able to do, but can’t be found in all freeware PDF creation software is the ability to password protect any PDF file. It’s not something most users will use daily, but it’s nice to have when you need it.

If you work with PDFs pretty regularly, PDFTK should be in your toolbox, without a doubt. Even if you own a copy of Acrobat Pro, PDFTK’s ability to do some advanced functionality with incredible ease makes it one most indispensable pieces of open source software out there.

Compatible Platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 0.95.2

Portable version: Available at http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable

Not long ago we took a look at ClamXav. Now, let’s take a look at the open source anti-virus program’s Windows-based sibling, ClamWin.

ClamWin is the sibling to two other great programs, ClamAV (the UNIX/Linux anti-virus scanner) and ClamXav (the open source Mac AV scanner). Their shared underlying scanning engine is what makes them siblings. The engine is the part of an AV program that tells it what patterns within a file are dangerous and which virus that pattern matches.

My favorite thing about all of the ClamAV-based apps is that they don’t insist on sitting on your machine running all the time. If you’re a power user and tend to be careful when trawling online, why waste the huge amount of resources most AV programs demand when you only need to scan from time-to-time? It’s much nicer to have those system resources open for regular computing and just run the AV program when you feel like you’ve made a mistake or just need to check out a specific file.

There’s one quick caveat that I always have to mention with the ClamAV apps, though. The first time you fire up the program, before you even run a scan, go into the preferences and under ‘General’ make sure you’ve got the radio selection set to ‘Move to Quarantine Folder:’, and verify that there’s a quarantine folder set. If that’s not done, the program will just run the scan and come back and tell you, “Hey, I found something!” But not actually do anything about any of the problem files. (See screenshot below for how I keep mine set up.)

Compatible platforms: 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard); if you’re running 10.6 (Snow Leopard), you’ll need to grab ClamXav version 2.0, just note that it’s in beta as of this writing; folks who are still running 10.2 and 10.3 aren’t completely left out in the cold, but due to the developer’s (completely understandable) limited resources, the virus scanning engine is slightly out of date.

Version highlighted in this post: 1.1.1

“Wha?!” you say. “Fer realz!” I say. Today, we’re looking at a Mac anti-virus app. And as always, it’s completely free.

News arrived last week that the brand new OS X (10.6 a.k.a. Snow Leopard) will contain a malware blocker. Soon after, though, word dropped that it’ll only cover two pieces of malware and would be pretty limited in terms of which programs it works with. Fortunately, even that is sufficient for most Mac users.

But if you’re interested in something that packs a bit more oomph, ClamXav is here for you. ClamXav is a litter-mate of two other great programs, ClamAV (the UNIX/Linux anti-virus scanner) and ClamWin (the open source Windows AV scanner). Their shared underlying scanning engine is what makes them siblings. The engine is the part of an AV program that tells it what patterns within a file are dangerous and which virus that pattern matches.

My favorite thing about all of the ClamAV-based apps is that they don’t insist on sitting on your machine running all the time. That’s especially useful for Mac users since stumbling across a threat is so rare. It’s much nicer to have those system resources open for regular computing and just running the AV program from time-to-time.

There’s one quick caveat that I always have to mention with the ClamAV apps, though. The first time you fire up the program, before you even run a scan, go into the preferences and under ‘General’ make sure that there’s a check mark next to ‘Quarantine infected files to:’, and verify that there’s a quarantine folder set. If that’s not done, the program will just run the scan and come back and tell you, “Hey, I found something!” But not actually do anything about any of the problem files.

With the tiny number of viruses that affect the Mac, just having ClamXav around to run periodically is plenty and should keep you way ahead of the curve and sleeping well at night.

Platforms available: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7

Portable version: Available at site, right below installer file

Current version as of writing: 1.2.1

Everything is a lightweight, speedy, and portable local file search utility.  There’s a ton to love about it, but it comes with one caveat that will make it a nonstarter for a small contingent of users. For everybody else, there’s nothing to lose by giving it a test drive; you just might come to find it an indispensable tool.

For a long time I thought nothing could hold a candle to the elegance and thoroughness of Google Desktop’s local search capabilities. While, there’s probably still nothing that can compete with its thoroughness, in all other dimensions, Everything comes awfully close.

Before going any further, let’s touch on Everything’s sole weakness so you can move on without wasting too much time if you discover that the app’s definitely not for you. Everything is able to run so quickly (and portably) because it makes use of a too rarely leveraged aspect of Windows’ native file system, NTFS. (If you’re not sure if you’re running NTFS or not, it’s pretty safe to assume you are. Unless you manually changed the setting when installing Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7, you’re almost definitely using NTFS.) NTFS is what’s called an indexing file system. One of the special aspects of an indexing file system is that it keeps something like a database of all the files and folders stored within it. By digging into that “database”, Everything gets near-instant access to everything on an NTFS volume.

Unfortunately, FAT-based file systems don’t have anything like that for Everything to use, so they get left out in the cold. How big a deal that is to you completely depends on the way you use your computer. If you have one hard drive that keeps everything you have on it, Everything is perfect for you.

In my case, I keep a lot of  external hard drives and USB flash drives floating around. Because of the relatively small size of the flash drives and my borderline OCD level of directory/folder organization, I usually don’t have much problem keeping what’s on them straight. I leave my smaller external hard drives formatted as FAT for maximum portability. But my bigger external drives I convert to NTFS because I tend to keep them as supplements to my notebooks’ small built-in drives. Also, those big drives tend to hold multimedia files, which, in my case, are always viewed/listened to on a Windows machine.

If your usage is similar to mine, you’ll love Everything. On the other hand, if you have external hard drives that you pack around to Mac and/or Linux machines, you’ll want those drives to be formatted with FAT for its near universal compatibility. The only downside to that is, of course, that Everything won’t work for you.

Platforms available: OS X 10.4.7 & up

Current version as of writing: 1.1.4

If you’ve had issues with VLC or are just a big fan of QuickTime, Perian could be what you need to unlock the true power hiding within QuickTime. It’ll help you open just about any kind of audio or video file you’ll come across right within QuickTime.

QuickTime has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, in its stock configuration, that potential is hindered by a really narrowly defined set of codecs. Codecs are what tell a piece of multimedia software how to deal with (i.e. COde/DECode) the various audio and video formats it encounters. That’s why, for example, when you throw an MKV file at QuickTime, it tells you to take a hike.

But that’s where Perian comes to the rescue! Think of it like a giant plugin that frees QuickTime to play all of the most common video formats, and even most of the truly eclectic ones out there, along with a handful of audio formats, like WMA, that Apple tends to want to marginalize.

Normally I hesitate to just copy and paste things from a program’s site, but it doesn’t get much more efficient for showing what Perian can handle than this handy-dandy bulleted list you’ll find at Perian.org:

• File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
• Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
• Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
• AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
• Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT

So if you’re in need of unleashing QuickTime on some video files you’ve collected, Perian is hands down the way to go. Of course, if you haven’t already tried VLC Media Player and you’re not averse to trying something new, it’s featured as a “FreeLoader Pick” in the book, and its awesomeness just can’t be overstated!