Some of my favorite tools
Development
- C++, Perl I have an irrational dislike for Java. I am ashamed of this but there, I said it.
- Git - source control Linus Torvalds developed it. Ergo, I use it or something less fanboy-ish.
- Vim - text editor Once you get past its near vertical learning curve, beats any IDE hands down.
- Mediawiki - wiki I haven't really tried out other wiki software. Works well enough.
Writing and Presentations
- Keynote - presentations
- R - prototyping code and plotting graphs; ggplot2 on R produces the most beautiful plots
- LatexIt - quickly generate images of LaTeX equations
- OmniGraffle - Package to draw diagrams
Reading List management
- Mendeley - to organize academic papers I used Zotero for a while but I had to ditch Firefox and Zotero doesn't have a Chrome version. Mendeley's social features while rudimentary are a definite plus.
- Skim - to annotate and view PDFs Scribble on the sides of all the papers you read without devastating yet another swathe of forests. Best of all, it's free!
Tools to enable working remotely
- screen Lifesaver if you work from multiple locations.
- sshfs - enables mounting remote filesystems, very useful while working remotely
Organization
- Remember the Milk - todo list manager By far, the best online todo manager.
- Evernote My digital brain.
- Mint - personal finance tracking The only sane way to manage passwords. It's pen source and has mobile apps.
- Mint - personal finance tracking Provides a consolidated view and does decent analysis.
- Dropbox - online backups Other competing services are Mozy and Carbonite. Dropbox won in this category because 1. it offers access to your files via the web 2. offers versioning (albeit limited to the last 30 days if you are too cheap to spring for its paid service.)
- Google Calendar
- Google Reader - RSS aggregator
Toys
- Kindle I absolutely love it to bits. Wish it did a better job at rendering research papers though.
- Android powered Nexus S I for one welcome my Google overlords. They own my data, ergo they own me. I foolishly am fine with that.
Other fun tools and sites
- WisdomTap - (re)search products to buy Developed by smart friends / former colleagues.
- Yahoo! Pipes - Use rss feeds as Lego building blocks Warning: Can be a time sink :)


