Sites of the week

Software updates are a painful part of computer ownership. Secunia Personal Software Inspector won’t install all the updates for you, but it will scan your drive and show you what needs to be updated, even providing links to the updates where it can.

Secunia PSI reached version 1.0 in November of 2008, so it’s fairly fresh software.  It offers a simple and advanced mode. The Simple mode leaves off programs that don’t have easy updates, so I suggest switching to Advanced mode for anyone.

• Take a look at Secunia Personal Software Inspector

Choosing a development environment can be a challenge, but I’ve been happy with Coda from Panic Software. Coda offers most every tool I need in a single application. Targeted to web development, Coda offers syntax highlighting for over twenty languages & formats, searchable online manuals, and live preview using Safari’s WebKit. Sometimes the simplest things are nice, and the Sites pane with a thumbnail view of each site makes managing and finding dozens of sites a snap at work. Even though my office is a Microsoft shop, I use Coda as my primary coding system.

I keep finding new uses for Coda, too. Yesterday I was saved by the token-based find-and-replace, which let me perform complex actions without the effort of building regular expressions. I’ve used the Subversion support for pulling source code or projects in which I am interested; I’ve used the Publish function to unify local and remote directories over FTP without worrying about skipping or replacing files.

Coda isn’t free, but I depend on it every day, and gladly recommend it. They’re at version 1.6.3 and it just keeps getting better.

• See Coda at Panic.com

For the mobile Mac user, managing multiple network locations, different printers, network shares, and more can be time-consuming and painful.MarcoPolo can save time and keep you sane.

With rules including Wireless SSIDs, connected USB devices, open applications, the time, even keyboard illumination sensors, you can automate changes to your system configuration at home, the office, even the corner coffee shop.

MarcoPolo 2.5 is free. It is no longer maintained but I’ve encountered no bugs, and 3.0 is in the works, so keep an eye on it.

Update: Version 2.5.1 is available which works properly with Snow Leopard.

• Check out MarcoPolo
• Download MarcoPolo 2.5.1 Patch for Snow Leopard