As a freelancer staying organized and on top of all my projects is essential. Over the last few years I’ve tried a variety of GTD apps and somehow they all seemed to fall short in one way or another. Just when it all seemed hopeless along comes The Hit List… a new application included in this years Macheist bundle. Before reading any of the hype I decided to jump right into the beta version and give it a shot. Within the first day of using The Hit List I was hooked. The application is easy to use, packed with functionality (neatly tucked away so its not annoying), and an overall joy to use. The only thing missing now is an iPhone app which the Potion Factory says is already under development! Go check it out…

1. Skype – This one is a no brainer… free calls over the internet to other people on Skype. Easy to use and beats holding a cellphone up to your ear when your on long business calls. Also great for conference calls and keeping in touch with with family.

2. Last.fm – There are a lot of tools out there for discovering new music but Last.fm seems to be the most comprehensive. The last.fm website is incredibly dense and the desktop radio is great for sitting back and discovering new music. There’s even an iPhone application for listening to your stations on the go.

3. DropBox – Store, Sync, and Share your files online. Occasionally I’ll need to send large files to friends or clients and DropBox seems to be a great solution. It’s easy to use and it stores files in the cloud so you can access your stuff from anywhere.

Honorable mention: Quicksilver is another amazing application that I recently tried adopting. Quicksilver allows you to quickly perform tasks using keyboard commands. Tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, and sending e-mail. While extremely powerful I couldn’t get passed just using it as an application launcher. Therefore I got rid of it since Leopards built-in spotlight works just as well.

Oh yeh, and they’re all FREE! Happy downloading!

TextMate – If you wanna design a great site then you need to get down to the nitty gritty, and that means hand coding everything. After trying a slew of freeware and non-freeware editors I’ve finally landed on TextMate. It’s incredibly lightweight, formats code nicely, and makes managing several projects a breeze. Unfortunately TextMate is only for Macs so if you’re on a PC your out of luck :( Head over to Smashing Magazine and read their article on 25 Useful WYSIWYG Editors Reviewed. You may find a good alternative.

Photoshop – Although incredibly expensive, Photoshop is a must have if you want the fancy graphics to go along with your badass code. There are definitely other freeware options out there but Photoshop has a great set of tools specific for web design and optimizing graphics.

Firefox – Firefox is a web designers best friend. Not only does it display HTML and CSS correctly, there are a wide range of plugins that make the process of debugging a hell of a lot easier, number one on my list being Firebug. By allowing you to edit styles and HTML right within the browser, it allows you to quickly make tweaks to reach the desired effect. It really is WYSIWYG. In addition to Firebug, FireFTP is an amazing FTP client perfect for quickly uploading files as you work. If your using version control and need to edit directly through FTP you may want to try something like Cyberduck along with TextMate. Lou Zell has a great article on how to set that up.

* If you’re on a Mac testing your site on Internet Explorer can be a bit of a pain. Services like Browsershots can be useful, but painfully slow. If you want to immediately check cross browser compatibility I would recommend running a virtual desktop with VMware or Parallels. These are particularly useful because you can have Windows running in a separate window allowing you to quickly check all the nightmares IE has in store for you.

What’s in your toolbox? Hit up the comment section!