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Gems favorites

Adam C. Engst, Macworld senior contributor and publisher of the TidBits newsletter:

Backdrop (   )

For those of us who need to take screenshots of OS X’s frequently translucent interface elements, Backdrop’s disarmingly simple function—putting a white background above all the usual window clutter—is tremendously useful.

EasyFind (   )

Spotlight simply doesn’t work well for me, since I often want to limit my search to just file names—a task that EasyFind performs with less fuss.

GrandPerspective (   ) and WhatSize (   )

When I’m running out of space on one of my Macs, I take a two-pronged approach to identifying the culprits. First I run GrandPerspective to get a graphical overview of which folders and files are the largest. Then I use WhatSize to drill down and determine more specifically what I want to delete.

SubEthaEdit (   )

For quick writing with a small group, such as the writing we need to do when covering an Apple keynote for TidBits, I have come to depend on SubEthaEdit’s real-time collaborative writing capabilities.