Now, obviously my choices will not suite many programmers. For this reason, please bear in mind that I’m a PHP developer, and my choices focus on PHP/HTML/CSS development. There are going to be a few repeated apps, simply because there’s a fine line between the two subjects.

Ok, lets get started!

10. VMWare Fusion
As any web developer will know, getting your sites to work properly in all the major browsers can be a nightmare. Especially when you’ve got to work around IE. For this reason, I needed to have a way to test out my work on Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, as well as some other, less well known Windows only browsers. VMWare fusion lets you install, and run Windows on top of your existing OS X system. You can effectively run windows and mac applications side-by-side seamlessly. This is great when testing our your work in those Windows browsers. VMWare has a few alternatives such as Parallels, or the free VirtualBox by sun. All of these apps provide a great way of getting Windows, Linux or any Unix based OS up an running inside your Mac!

9. Snapz Pro X
Snapz Pro X is a screenshot application, that replaces the standard CMD+Shift+3 screen capture combination with a range of options. For example, instead of saving the screenshot to your desktop, you can put it in the clipboard. In addition to this, you’re not forced to capture the entire screen. Snapz X Pro lets you capture a small selection, a window (‘objects’) or even take a video! It’s a very lightweight application and has some great features!

8. Dropbox -
Where o where would I be without my Dropbox! Dropbox provides you with 2GB of free storage. It acts like a folder on your mac, but whenever files are updated (locally or by another computer with access), the files get synced. Whats great, is that because the files are synced, you don’t need Internet access to use it. I generally use DropBox for storing files that I’m working on, allowing me to access them on my iMac, or my MacBook Pro. There’s also a great revisions system, which means if you accidentally overwrite a file, you can log into their site, and retrieve it, similar to a subversion setup. If you use THIS LINK to get a Dropbox account, I get some extra free space, and so do you. If you dont want to use that link, you can go directly to GetDropbox.com and register.

I’m currently using the free 2GB, however for $9.99 /month (or $99.99 /year) you can upgrade to 50GB storage. They also offer a 100GB option for $199.99 / year.

7. Active Collab
I only really started using this over the last month, however have found it to be fantastic for managing my web projects. It lets you track release versions (and their individual tasks, documents, etc), projects, files, staff, time tracking, etc. Its fantastic. There are a few free alternatives out there, and a fork was made off of the first release of Active Collab before it stopped being a free app.

6. Web Developer Toolbar (Firefox)
The Web Developer Toolbar is a Firefox addon. Ok, its not technically an App, but its as good as. It lets you perform a range of options on a website, including disabling images, javascript, css, etc as well as add custom stylesheets, resize windows, etc. It’s a must-have for web developers. You can download it for free from the Mozilla addons site!

5. MAMP Pro
MAMP pro is the paid add-on to the free MAMP application. MAMP is basically Apache, MySQL and PHP for your Mac, all ready to use. MAMP Pro adds on an attractive GUI to allow you to setup virtual hosts, and configure custom settings per domain. I use it for splitting up projects into separate local sub-domains.

4. Transmit
Transmit is a paid FTP application, with a fantastic GUI and range of features. It’s made by Panic, the same guys that brought you Coda. Transmit is a fantastic FTP application, and supports all major functions. In addition, it supports Amazon S3, WebDav, SFTP and SCP.

3. Photoshop
I think this one goes without saying. I’ve been using Photoshop for over 5 years and have yet to find anything remotely similar. Even GIMP, an application that Linux lovers swear is just as good as Photoshop, really does not come anywhere near the features of this great Adobe app. I’m using CS4 on my MBP, and CS3 on the iMac (simply because I’ve not really needed to upgrade yet!)

2. Terminal
I’m a heavy Terminal user when developing. I generally tend to keep terminal open 24/7 because it allows me complete control of my Linux server. I use it to debug, test and install software. If you’re strictly dealing with a Mac, you’re not going to be needing this, however its a handy tool to have when you’ve not got a GUI handy!

1. Coda
Yes, Coda’s done it again. You will recall, Coda made it to the top of my last ‘Top 10′ post, for the simple reason that there is nothing like it! Coda provides a complete web development suite; A site management system, a file browser, a code editor, a css editor, a terminal, books and a web browser. What more could you need?!

So, those are my top 10, what are yours?

RickyMills.com (Re)-Launched
I relaunched RickyMills.com and ditched my old self-made portfolio site in favor of a nice WordPress blog, which would be used to track my progress towards being in control (either through sole ownership or through myself and Mike‘s Rike Media brand) of websites that would generate a long term income.

The blog got off to a great start, however I don’t feel I made enough effort in my first month. This was mainly down to having a lot of coursework to do (and catch up on) as I received 5 conditional University offers.

FotoRazor.com

After looking around at some websites for sale, I purchased FotoRazor.com, a free image host. The site was earning $70 income from text link sales and pop up adverts. I managed to increase this income to over $100 a month by adding optimized adsense adverts on the site.

I found that after this, I really didn’t want to run this kind of site. It had the multiple revenue sources that I was looking for, however I don’t really want to run an image host. Because of this, I placed it up for sale again. I’ve currently had many offers for the site, all of which I am considering. I did have one $700 offer however it turned out to be from a fake bidder. You can bid on the site over at DigitalPoint or DNForum.

WebmasterStash.com

Not much has changed around the site. Mike released some updates for StashNews, which is really turning into a great news systems. I dont think there is a better flat-file news system out there, feature wise. Its got everything that you would expect, plus that little bit more. For example; Integrated template engine with web-based editor (very few flat-file template engines can boast this!), easy and fast site integration, multiple users, captcha image verification on the news comment forms to help battle the spam bots, and more.

In addition to this, I started work on a concept for a new area to WebmasterStash; webmaster tools. Basically the idea is to have custom tools that allow users to check pagerank, backlinks, generate meta tags, etc. I’m still working on this, however I hope to have it live with our first bunch of tools online towards the end of February.

I’m hoping that once FotoRazor has sold that we can get a vbSEO license and/or some decent Photoshop tutorials written as mine aren’t exactly the best! Also I want to get the site promoted more, however I really dont think sticking some banners on a few sites is going to do much to help. We need some quality content. The templates and scripts are good, but the site needs tutorials to survive.

Other bits and bobs

I moved all our sites (except our old WSDeluxe project) over to a single VPS server as our hosting costs were about $60 a month. It was the right time to do it as our Dreamhost account is due for renewal in Feburary and after their “minor” billing problems I dont fancy staying with them (even more so when I saw that our 2007 uptime was only 85%). I moved off our JaguarPC managed VPS as we dont need a managed VPS so I was paying for a service that I didnt need.

The new VPS is a Link 4 at VPSLink.com – We’ve used them before and they have a good reliable service. The only downside is they have hard-drive speed issues which make sites seem a little more sluggish, however this isn’t really a huge problem for us at this stage.

So, thats January! I’ll be posting more progress soon, including the status of the FotoRazor auction!