Having bought my first Mac about a year and a half ago one app that I quickly started to love was Growl. It brought a universal notification system to the operating system that any application could make use of, and the cross-program uniformity made the OS experience that much better.

I always find myself using regular expressions (a.k.a. regex) in my programming because they are often the best way to parse out bits and pieces from blocks of text. Ever since I discovered the online RegExr that has been my tool of choice, but sometimes it's nice to have a dedicated application. Programs like RegexBuddy are awesome, but aren't free.

Sometimes, Apple sneaks in new features into their software without ever making a big deal out of it. When iTunes 9 was released, they made it possible to add files to iTunes without even launching the app. The secret to this trick not as far-fetched as you might think...

I love the fact that Microsoft gives users a free 25GB of storage for files through SkyDrive, but I think they're able to do that because they don't provide an easy way for people to upload things. That way most people will never come close to hitting their 25GB limit, but that may change with the free SkyDrive Explorer app.

For those of you using CyberSearch I thought I'd let you know that I just released version 2.0.2 that resolves almost all of the issues users were reporting with Firefox 3.6 Beta 1. The main reason I wanted to let everyone know is that Mozilla hasn't approved CyberSearch 2.0 yet, which means you won't receive an update notification in the browser.

I've been working on a new version of CyberSearch for a little while now, and I've been trying to come up with ways to add all of the most requested features.

Coming across some free software is nice, but what's even nicer is finding an app that you typically have to pay for that's available at no cost for a limited time. Do you like the sound of that? If so you may want to check out the currently free (until the end of October) WinX DVD Ripper Platinum that is being given away compliments of Techweenies.

A few weeks ago we wrote about a free audio converter that was pretty nice, but when installing the app it tries to also put a bunch of third-party software on your machine. I made sure to point this out, but our readers stepped up and mentioned several other apps that are both free and clean. One of them, called winLAME, was recommended by Ian and really caught my attention.

Looking for a way to back up your old DVDs onto your hard drive? Want to watch your purchased DVD movies on your iPod? You're certainly not the only one. For some reason however, developers are not very keen on developing tools that do this. Luckily, HandBrake has stepped up to the plate with a free tool that lets you take control of your media.