It’s interesting to me that so many of the applications I’ve looked at so far have Growl support for notification display. For example:

• Adium uses Growl for IM notifications.
• Speed Download uses Growl to inform me that downloads have started and finished.
• MacJournal sends Growl notifications when a background blog update has completed.
• iGTD pops up a Growl notification to inform me that a to-do entry entered via Quicksilver has made it to iGTD.
• Google Notifier informs me of new mail using Growl.
• Google Reader Notifier informs me of new RSS entries using Growl.
• LicenseKeeper informs me of import and export operation completion using Growl.

…and the list goes on. Ubiquitous, isn’t it?

Growl really has no equivalent in Windows; I suppose the balloon messages used by tray icons are the closest analog, but it’s a stretch.

This application is to me another example of the synergy, consistency, and exceptional UI that seems to permeate the experience on the Mac.

Frank De Graeve, the host of the Neat Little Mac Apps podcast, has done a very informative review of Growl, so I’ll not bore you with details here; listen to Frank’s podcast to discover the wonder that is Growl.

Growl is GPLed open-source.

 

Two of my favorite blogs are Lifehacker and 43 Folders.

Both had been buzzing for months about Quicksilver, a fast launch utility for OS X.

Actually, ‘fast launch utility’ doesn’t really describe what Quicksilver does all that accurately; the thing is, describing it at all seems to elude me. Suffice to say it is amazing, incredibly powerful, extensible, and configurable. It takes a couple of days to get into the Zen of it, but you’ll quickly wonder how you got along without it.

The following resources are good starting points to becoming as one with Quicksilver:

• The Macrumors Quicksliver guide.
• The Quicksilver category archive on 43 Folders.
• The Quicksilver section of Lifehacker

Quicksilver is free. Go get it. Now.

 

While we’re in a mousy kind of mood….

I was turned on to Mouse Locator while listening to the Typical Mac User podcast, hosted by Victor Cajiao.

This free application is elegant and simple; after a configurable duration of mouse inactivity, it briefly draws a bullseye around the mouse pointer as soon as the mouse is moved.

I find this to be tremendously useful on a large display, where there’s a lot of real estate in which to lose the mouse pointer. The bullseye makes the pointer instantly visible — no more wiggling the mouse around in order to locate the pointer.

Brilliant.