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I released version 1.2 (download) of my little GDocsUploader program. After being published on a few websites and having over 4000 downloads, I thought it might be nice to update the app a little.

There are bug fixes, better error dialogs, a new icon (used under a creative commons license) and uploading of photos into Picasa Web Albums. A bulleted list of changes is published in the project wiki.

GDocsUploader is a small Mac OS X program that I wrote to quickly upload documents to Google Docs, simply by dragging and dropping a document icon onto the uploader icon.

I created this project entirely in my spare time. If you would like to support further development, please consider a donation:

A while ago, I found myself needing to upload many document files into Google Docs. I saw that Google had a new API for doing such, so I decided to write a quick little app for the Mac to do just that. Just drag and drop documents onto the icon, and away their uploaded.

I had never written any sort of real Mac application, so I just kind of glued something together out of Python, applescript, and a couple of helper apps. I threw the source up at Google Project Hosting, which has been good, because otherwise I would have been supporting the thousands of downloads.

Recently, my little droplet app became more famous. It was featured on lifehacker.com as a featured Mac Download. My favorite line from their post was, “Gdocsuploader is still new and a bit unpolished.” I think it should be considered more than just a bit unpolished. They should have said, “this thing might work, and is about as unpolished as lava rock.”

There have been a multitude of other posts about my little project:

• Web Worker Daily claims it could save you a bit of friction.
• VinodLive says it shines with some cool drag and drop options
• i use this shows 2 people are using it. I wonder how many people use i use this.
• samjones jaiku’ed it saying it saves time. Erik also jaiku’ed it when he added it to his del.icio.us bookmarks.
• Geekout.tv actually mentioned me by name! Thanks to them for the nice personal reference
• It hass even gone international at macworld.idg.se. I don’t know what they’ve said, but I hope it is nice.

Thanks to everyone who wrote something nice about it.

Here is a quick list of apps that I frequently use on OS X. I believe all of them are free and open source. many of the applications are development tools that I find useful.

• Adium - Instant messenger built with libpurple.
• Firefox - Web Browser
• NeoOffice - OpenOffice.org port
• Smultron - a nice, simple code editor. Integrates well with Cyberduck.
• Cyberduck - A SFTP client. Please read my full review.
• Quicksilver - a fast application launcher
• Komodo Edit - my new favorite small code IDE
• The Gimp - graphics editing program that requires X11
• Platypus - packages python/perl/php/shell scripts as double-clickable OS X applications.

Those are my favorite, most used apps. You should also check out this list of mac apps, some of which I’ve used either on the mac or other platforms, others I plan on trying soon.

With the latest release of OS X Leapord being released soon, I thought I would take another look at some of the features of Leapord server. One of the things I’ve been anticipating is the new calendaring server. Apple says that the new server “works well with others,” but maybe not as well as they were first saying. It seems that Apple who was once touting Microsoft Outlook compatibility is now being quite hush about it. Consider this sentence from their old iCal Server features page:

iCal Server uses open calendaring protocols for intergrating with leading calendar programs, including iCal 3 in Leopard, Mozilla’s Sunbird, OSAF’s Chandler, and Microsoft Outook.

The same sentence recently changed to omit any reference to outlook:

iCal Server uses open calendaring protocols for intergrating with leading calendar programs, including iCal 3 in Leopard, and popular CalDAV clients from Mozilla, Open Source Application Foundation and others.

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Despite having a pretty cool name, Cyberduck is a pretty cool program.  It is an FTP/SFTP program for Mac OS X.  I like using it to upload files to my webserver using SFTP.  It integrates in with my Mac operating system pretty well, and best of all, it is open source.  Being open source means that I’ll never be charged for it, and I can copy and redistribute it as much as I want.  I can even change part of the program if I want.  Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out and applaud those who have worked on Cyberduck and say, thanks.

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