On the Mac, there are some fantastic applications that are completely free. Here is a list of what I believe to be some of the best I’ve found so far.

• Adium - The all in one, completely customizable instant messaging program. It absolutely rocks!
• AOL Radio - I love this because I can get nearly commercial free streaming music from all genres.
• AppFresh* - Only free while in development, AppFresh keeps me up-to-date on what installed programs are not up-to-date.
• Butler - Applications & Folders in the menu bar are so handy. Plus it can do so much more.

Today, the folks over at Growl released official extensions for both Thunderbird and Firefox. You can now be alerted when new mail arrives or when downloads complete.

Hosted on Zooomr

Install is extremely simple, just install the extension. That’s it. You can configure how it displays though the main Growl system preference just like any other application. It’s simple and sweet. I’ve been using them both all day and they are a great addition to the Mac platform.

Get Growl for Thunderbird or Firefox!

If you followed the Thunderbird Labels modification I put up a few days back, you may have found out that it didn’t work for custom labels/tags. Yes, I knew that, but wanted to start off with the basic labels. Here is a quick tutorial on how to get your custom ones up and running.

What you’ll need to do is add the following lines of code to your CSS file. The code below accounts for one label/tag color, which, in this example, happens to be orange. You can see where the orange color is represented by the orange HEX colors. The lighter orange HEX number is for the background of the un-selected, labeled message.

If you’ve upgraded to Thunderbrid 2.0 you can now run the Provider extension that will sync Google Calendar and Thunderbird running the calendar extension.

It’s very easy to setup thanks to bfish.xaedalus.net’s instructions. I tested it out this morning and it worked flawlessly. Ok, maybe one minor issue. It seems that it ‘automagically’ populated my Google username and it wasn’t correct. I had to switch it. But other than that, the directions are dead on and easy to follow.

I’m a fan of Thunderbird (the free email client) and version 2 was just released today!

Besides performance, security and bug fixes that come with any upgrade, Thunderbird 2 has more labels/tags with better organizing options, multi paned sidebar, universal Mac binary, better Vista support and a Firefox like search bar in each message. I’m sure there is more, but until I can really dig into it and use it for a while, I won’t know.

I’m a big fan of Thunderbrid, however one of the things that bugs me is that the labels don’t stand out enough. I feel as if they kind of blend into the background. I did a bit of research and figured out how to style the labels to stand out a bit more. Check it out:

To update your labels in Thunderbird follow these simple steps.

With the recent upgrade to the Mozilla Addon’s site, there is now a sandbox. What’s a sandbox you ask? Well it’s where all new addons go before they go live to the public.

The great thing about the sandbox is that once you are in, you can view and install any theme or extension that has been uploaded. There is no waiting for approval which is good news to developers. One can upload their item right away and send users to it.

I’m now an official AMO (addons.mozilla.org) tester. I volunteered for the job so that I could test themes and help get more of them out to the public faster. So far I’ve done a few themes and a few extensions.

The upside is I get to see all the coolest new addons before anyone else. I can also give direct feedback to the authors in order to help them along. The downside is that there are so many waiting in the wings at times that I wish I could just do them all. Most of the submissions are extensions and I’m not quite up to testing many of them yet as I don’t know what they are suppose to do. I do try and test the ones that sound like something I’d install.

The other day Hawk Wings tipped us off about a new mail application that is coming to the Mac. It’s called Correo and it’s sound like it has a lot of potential.

Think of it like Camino, the cousin of Firefox that’s Gecko powered, but Mac pretty. Well Correo is the same thing. Gecko powered like Thunderbird, but Mac pretty.

Correo Mail Application Screen Shot Hosted on Zooomr

The current version is 0.1 and it’s off to a great start. It already includes POP & IMAP support, multiple accounts, two or three pained layouts, MacOSX spell check, excellent icons and really, all the basics.

To fill sometime between now and my next ‘announcement’, I thought I’d share five nine free Mac apps that make my day easier.

1. Firefox - Customizable web browser. I love it.
2. Thunderbird - For work Email.
3. TextWranger - Great all around text/html editor.
4. AOL Radio - XM Radio for free and almost commercial free. Sweet.
5. Adium - The only chat application worth having.
6. Journler - Best everything app. Text, Video, Audio and much more.
7. Quicksilver - Sweet HD search. Like Spotlight only prettier.
8. Skype (on a good day) - I use this daily for my work phone however I’m having issues lately.