My favorite free Mac software

This is the final chapter of my roundup of favorite tools. I'm really shocked that I use this many tools this regularly -- and these are just my favorites, I could probably do another list or two on tools I use often but not daily, like the Audacity audio editor.

With this many tools, I'm amazed I get anything done.

Adium desktop client for AIM, Google Talk, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo chat, all in one. Free, open source.

Tweetie client for Twitter. Free ad-supported, or $19.95 to register. The free TweetDeck is a close second.

Google Chrome. I've been using this as my primary browser for a few weeks, since the developer version for the Mac started to support a bookmark manager and extensions. It's much more stable on the Mac than Firefox ever was.

Growl is a centralized way of handling notifications on the Mac. For example, Growl notifies me when I get a new instant-message or tweet. Growl doesn't grab focus from my mouse and keyboard and demand my attention. It just pops up a diffident little notification that goes away on its own for a couple of seconds if I don't do anything with it. Third-party applications like Adium and Tweetie use Growl to send messages.

Skitch is a tool for taking screenshots and sharing them. You can easily size the images, scale them, and annotate them with circles, squares, arrows, text and more. Skitch is very handy for a toolblogger like me looking to include screenshots in posts. I've been surprised how useful I find it, and how many ways I've found to use it. Skitch has been in beta forever, but it's quite stable.

Facebook Desktop Notifications sits in my menu bar, and changes color and throws up a Growl message when I have a new notification on Facebook.

Pastebot Sync is a companion application to Pastebot for the Mac. It's an easy and fast way to transfer text and images between the iPhone and the Mac.

Bean. An open source word processor for when writing in plain text isn't quite enough.

And one more that you don't have to download from anywhere, because it's already a part of Mac OS X: Just last week, I was thinking, "I wish there was some equivalent of scrap paper on the Mac -- a place where I can easily create a text document without having to name it or worry where to save it, keep it for a short time, and easily dispose of it when I'm done, without having it clutter up my folders." Then I thought: "Doesn't Stickies do that?" I've been using it since then to jot down phone messages, compose replies to blog comments, and other ephemera.

And that covers my favorite tools, which I think is the best way I can introduce myself to you, the readers. Don't miss the previous installments:

My favorite inexpensive Mac software

My favorite Internet applications

My favorite hardware and my favorite iPhone apps