Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 14

Jon Phillips Dock Series
Jon Philips is a blogger, designer and musician based in Montreal, Canada. Jon created the well known and loved Freelance Folder as well as other projects such as Design Newz and Turn This Thing Off. He has been designing for around 4 years and is now also a successful WordPress Consultant.

Jon is one of the first members of our little web community that I became friendly with a few years ago when he kindly asked me to take part in an interview on my freelancing career. He has become a trusted friend and someone whose writing ability and creativity I admire.

I asked Jon if he would give us the lowdown on the applications he relies upon as a designer and blogger on a daily basis.

The Intro…

I bought my first Mac, a 15 inches Powerbook G4 in 2001. At the time I was running OS 9 and OS X and for some reason I used to prefer OS 9. Weird, I know… I’m now running on a 15 inches MacBook Pro and I also have a 22 inches monitor. I have to admit I rearrange my dock almost weekly. I move, add and remove icons all the time.

The Dock…

Jon Phillips Dock

  • Super Docker - Adds some extra functionalities to the dock like icon transparency, 2D/3D style, separators, stack of recent items, and many other cool things.
  • Google Desktop – Quickly search for emails, web history and files.
  • Parallels Desktop - I’m using Parallels to run Windoze XP (I tried BootCamp, but I prefer to use Parallels).
  • MAMP Pro – I use MAMP Pro for local installs of WordPress. Very useful when on the road and without an internet connection.
  • Billings – I sometimes use the Billings App for invoicing, though I’m used to working with Freshbooks (web-based).
  • iCal – I use iCal to schedule phone meetings and also take note of the dates I’m playing shows with my band (we also use Google Calendar for this).
  • EventBox – I use EventBox to check on my Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr profiles and also subscribe to RSS feeds and sync with my Google Reader.
  • Mail – Can’t live without Mail! And I got all my email addresses synced to my gMail account in case I need to access my emails but don’t have my laptop with me.
  • Safari 4 – My favorite web browser.
  • Firefox 3.5 – My second favorite web browser.
  • MSN Messenger – I rarely use MSN Messenger because I prefer Skype, but some people don’t have Skype installed (why?!) so this comes in handy sometimes.
  • Skype – I use Skype for personal and business calls and also video meetings.
  • iTunes – I simply cannot work on a design if I’m not listening to music!
  • VLC Player – I use VLC to play .avi files and other video formats that Quicktime doesn’t like.
  • Stickies – I use Stickies to write down stuff I have to do in a day, I use it as my simple to-do list app.
  • Text Wrangler – My favorite text editor!
  • Text Edit – I used text edit to write this very list you’re reading right now!
  • Freemind – For quick and easy brainstorming and mind-mapping. I find it’s particularly useful when starting new design projects.
  • Calculator – Basic but useful.
  • Roxio Toast Titanium – I rarely burn CDs anymore, but I figured I’d keep Toast just in case.
  • YemuZip – I use YemuZip to zip files I have to send to clients (mock-ups, layouts, WordPress theme files, etc).
  • Fetch – The only FTP client I have ever used (seriously!)
  • Flickr Uploader – Easier and faster than uploading images via the Flickr website.
  • Pixelmator – I use Pixelmator for quick and easy image retouching. At $59 it’s a steal.
  • Adobe Creative Suite - Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver. Flash, Flash Video Encoder, Acrobat Pro – I mostly use Fireworks for creating website layouts. I think that I use Fireworks more than any other software installed on my Mac. I need to upgrade to CS4 now I guess!
  • Age Of Empires III – I have a little something for Real Time Stretagy games and Age Of Empires (the whole series) is my favorite.
  • Splinter Cell – It’s an old game (the first of the Splinter Cell series), but it’s a lot of fun. Can you tell I’m not a hardcore gamer? Seriously, I’d much prefer playing old SNES games than anything else.
  • iLife – iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band. I rarely use iPhoto and Garage Band. I do use iMovie regularly when I need to quickly mix-down videos for clients.
  • iWork – Keynote, Pages and Numbers. I use only Pages for creating PDF documents (though I also use Google Docs for this), simply because I don’t need the other two, they just came on the CD and I installed them anyway.

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A huge thanks to Jon for taking time out to take part in the Dock Series.

As usual if you would like to share your dock, just leave a comment with a brief description of your dock apps and a link to a screenshot of it. Or take to your blog and write up a description of your dock as several others have done.

Other Creatives in the Series:

With more amazing creatives lined up, make sure to check back every Tuesday for the latest Dock Series installment. If you would like to be featured please leave a comment below.

Related posts:

  1. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 9
  2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 20
  3. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 11

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