Karyn’s Essential Digital tools

Want to know what my Mac computer and I can’t live without? Here’s the short list of my essential digital tools. Later I’ll give you a list of my essential non-digital tools.

Mellel
The absolute best Mac word processor for incorporating both left-to-right and right-to-left (i.e., Hebrew) writing systems into your documents. Very active and helpful user forum (which the developers contribute to frequently). A reasonable price at $49 ($35 educational rate). You can buy Mellel and Bookends together (see next item in my list) at a 40% discount. That’s just $109 for both (only $89 if you are a university student!)

Bookends
This reference management and bibliography application works seamlessly with Mellel. Keeps track of all your citations and will build a bibliography for you that is customized to whatever standards you have to follow.

Accordance
What can I say? I use this bible software every single day. Powerful searches, great modules, and attentive support (blog and forum). It can be intimidating to know where to begin (as you build your own set of modules), but the staff will be very helpful. If you are studying biblical languages, start with the Scholars Collection. Module I could not live without: HALOT.

Things
A GTD program (see “Getting Things Done” for more generic info on GTD ) you have to love. I no longer keep paper lists. That says it all. Download the free trial for a month. You’ll probably have to buy it before the month is over, you’ll be hooked.

Delicious Library
Scan your personal book and media collection into your own virtual library, complete with shelves and images of the book covers. Keep track of who you have loaned books to! Once you scan the barcode, the program looks up all the bibliographic details from LOC (that’s the Library of Congress, folks) or Amazon. Drag and drop books to different shelves for various projects. I very rarely have to enter any information by hand (unless the book is very old).

Fugu
Great free FTP program.

Taco
Nice little basic HTML editor. Sometimes simple is best. Free trial, $24.95 if you like it.

Mozy
Once you configure this online backup, you can forget about it. Keeps your files safe by backing them up in the background. I also use Time Machine, but I like having the Mozy redundancy.

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