Hi, I’m Grace Smith

Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 8

Adii is an entrepreneur, the co-founder of the successful online startup WooThemes and is known for being a bit of a ‘rockstar’ in the online world. Along with being a serial entrepreneur, he is also a designer & developer (CSS, PHP & WordPress), which has spawned his other company – a boutique design & development agency – Radiiate.

I asked Adii to take part in the Dock Series to share the applications he relies on, on a daily basis to keep the rockstar organised, creative and profitable.

The Intro…

My dock is probably very much a work in progress and if you asked me for another screenshot 3 months down the line, then it’ll probably differ quite a bit. But I guess this is a result of me only having switched over to Mac about 16 months ago and to an extent I’m still learning the “optimal” ways of doing stuff (I had 15-odd years of PC experience, before switching, in comparison for example).

If however there’s one thing that I try do with my dock, is to allow me to access all of the applications that I use most often with only one click. I also try limit the amount of applications in the dock, because whilst my 24″ LCD at work handles an extended dock nicely; the 15″ MBP display isn’t as lenient… But anyway, here goes…

The Dock…

• Finder – I don’t really think I use Finder at all (heh), but apparently it’s got to be there…
• System Preferences – For some reason I use this often; probably not daily, but often enough. Even though I know I can access it from OSX’s taskbar (??), I like the icon in my dock.
• Vodafone Mobile 3G Connect – For those times that I’m not on Wi-Fi and need to feed my internet addiction.

• 1Password – There’s only a handful of Mac apps that would make me never switch back to PC again and 1Password is one of those. I use it to store all of my passwords, bank & credit card details, along with other sensitive information. Obviously this is all synced up with my iPhone as well, which allows me to run my businesses from wherever.
• Things – Falls into the same category as 1Password. In fact, my fiance persuaded me to buy her a Macbook, because she loved watching me use Things. And she’s fussy about stuff like that. Enough said.
• Safari – I’ve been having a little personal war between Safari & Firefox. The official Safari 4 release however is my browser of choice, ever since FF became decidedly average.
• Firefox – It’s still in the dock, but only because I’m a web developer.
• Filezilla – One of the only things that I still carry with me from my PC days. Filezilla is an open source FTP clients and I’ve just never been able to get used to native Mac FTP clients.
• Coda – Satisfies all of my web development needs.
• Espresso – Not quite sure that I’d ever use Espresso instead of Coda, but I like the odd change around, when I’ve spent too much time in Coda.
• Versions – We use SVN extensively for WooThemes and whilst I’m still quite new to developing in this way, Versions’ sexy interface definitely makes it a whole lot easier.
• Mamp – Can’t use either Coda or Espresso without this one. And bandwidth in SA is too shitty to work on a live testing server.
• Tweetie – The best Twitter client for Mac.
• Skype – Only used for offline friends and a few business contacts. And obviously this is the only way the WooThemes team can stay in touch on a daily basis.
• Photoshop CS3 – Can you call yourself a web designer without owning a copy of Photoshop?

• Illustrator CS3 – I can’t use Illustrator for the life of me, but I still use it when I buy vector stock and need to slightly manipulate them. That’s about it though. OH and I can use the type tool or draw you a straight, black line… Does that count?
• Colorschemer – Desktop application for mixing & matching colour palettes. Much prefer the desktop functionality to online alternatives.
• Littlesnapper – All my visual, inspiration bits go in there.
• iTunes – Obvious.
• iMovie – I needed some basic video editing functionality for doing video blogs and iMovie seems the obvious choice. And 09 doesn’t seem to be half-bad either…
• Screenflow – Incredible app that I’m starting to use more and more. Generally I’d use it for WooThemes-related screencasts & marketing, but am sure I’ll find some more ways of using it soon.
• WooThemes Basecamp – The only way (beyond Skype & e-mail) for the WooTeam to keep track of stuff is via Basecamp. So this is a SSB (powered by Fluid), specifically for our Basecamp install.
• Scrivener – Using Scrivener to write my Rockstar Business book. I love how I can just jack stuff in there, without thinking about the order of chapters or even titles for those chapters. It’s really just about writing.
• TextEdit – Such a basic app, which I find myself using so often. I often use it to remember small bits of info when I don’t have a pen+paper around and other times it’s all about copying text in there to strip the formatting.
• Projects Folder – Link to documents & files related to my different businesses or projects (WooThemes, Radiiate, my blog etc.).
• Trashcan – Note to self: clean this out more often.

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A huge thanks to Adii 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:

• Part 1 – Grace Smith
• Part 2 – Khoi Vinh
• Part 3 – Matt Brett
• Part 4 – Veerle Pieters
• Part 5 – Tim Van Damme
• Part 6 – Ian Stewart
• Part 7 – John Boardley

With more amazing creatives lined up, make sure to check back every Tuesday for the latest Dock Series installment.

Related posts:

1. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 16
2. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 13
3. Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 15

Grace Smith is owner of the small but perfectly formed web design studio Postscript5, in Northern Ireland. To keep up to date with the latest designalicious content, then please consider subscribing.