Mobile Apps
Signal – This is the most secure form of communication you can get on the phone. Ditch the facebook products and get on this. Probably a challenge as i know mostly people with IT backgrounds are on this.
Rain Parrot – very accurate rain prediction down to the minute.
WillyWeather – For all your weather needs. Wind speed forecasting is very handy to work out if I have head wind on the way down to or on the way back.
Pocket Cast – Cost a few dollars but tonnes better than the default podcast app. Who on earth listens to radio in the car anymore.
Waze – Gives more accurate direction than google maps. Warns of speed camera, potholes, road works accidents, and lets you know what your speed compared to the current speed limit (very handy in France since speed limit signs are very rare)
FireFox Focus – You are only allowed 1 tab. Helps keep you focused. Otherwise I use Brave when I need multi-tab browsing.
Outlook – Email client of choice on the phone. I don’t use the default.
Authy – For 2 factor authentication, you should be turning 2FA on for your emails and social media at the very least.
Audible – For the consumption of audio books
BitWarden – Password manger of choice, because it’s open source. Free if you don’t need the advanced features.
Twitter – The better social media of the mix.
Feedly – News agreegator, where I can get a headline view of what’s being talked about in news sites of topics I’m interested in.
Waking Up – My go to meditation app. The lessons are awesome. (Not religious, Sam Harris is the most anti-religion person, next to Christopher Hitchens)
CoinCap – Price tracking of cryptocurrency
Evernote – This is my go to digital notebook, where I keep notes. It comes with an extension for your browser, that allows you to quickly clip interesting things that you read. I have a notebook for places to eat, recipes to make, hacks, parenting, health, fitness, career, money, marketing, electronics, philosophy, personal development. And my list of notebooks ages on and on and on.
NordVPN – My goto VPN at the moment.
TradingView – my watchlist sync to my phone! How awesome is that!
Vic Field Guide – From the Melbourne museum. For all those times when you see a bird or insect and wonder what bird that is, you will find it in here.
PhotoScan – Great app from google that lets you digitalise your physical photos. I also use it to scan documents.
Speedtest – I use this to see what speed I’m getting on the connection I’m on.
Google Translate – You can use the camera feature to translate through your camera. Came in handy in Germany. They just need to built this into a contact lens.
TeamViewer- I use to remote control one of my pc from my phone.
Trello – I use this to organise various list, more than meistertask.
Programs
Brave Browser – My Default go to web browser.
PhotoMove – Allows me to quickly organise all my photos into folders of year, month, day. I use it to backup photos from the phone to our network drive.
Notepad++ – It’s like notepad, but allows for tabs. Where I keep random notes, or to compare two sets of text to find the difference quickly.
Greenshot – This is heaps better than the snippy tool. It’s free, it’s open source, and best of all it allows me to quickly add a big red arrow to screenshots!
Visual Studio Code – My goto editor for writing code.
PDFSam Basic – Lets you split and merge PDF. And it’s free.
Audacity – My goto program for audio editing.
OBS Studio – For any kind of streaming or video recording. Watch a quick 30min guide on youtube to get up and running as it’s the most advance streaming and video recording program. Had to use this to be able to show two cameras at once.
Glary Utilities – Alternative to CCcleaner since they had that hacking incident.
Scrivener – My goto program for writing long pieces. It’s what book writers use to help organise their books. 10x better than MS word once you’ve learnt how to use it.
HandBrake – Used for conversion of video file formats.
Teamviewer – Allows me to remotely connect to my computer.
MobaXterm – My goto program to log into my linux box.
Pulseway – You need it installed so that then you can turn your pc off remotely.
VLC – Media file player than I always install. Better than what comes on Windows.
Adobe Lightroom – This is what I use to organise my photos and make edits. Can usually get away of 99% of photo edits in here without having to fire up photoshop.
Dark Table – Alternative to Adobe lightroom, and it’s free
Camtasia – Goto program for video editing.
Browser Extension
Adblock Plus – it blocks the ads on youtube.
uBlock Origin – ad blocking
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials – more privacy blocking features
Decentraleyes – Protects against tracking through CDN
Ghostery – More privacy ad block
Privacy Badger – even more privacy blocking. (I’m not sure i need so many and it’s probably doubling up but they have never clashed …so oh well, go hard or go home)
Bookmarks clean up – to clean up any dead bookmarks or dups that i have put in.
Pixel Block and Ugly Email – blocks the tracking in email, specifically gmail.
Evernote Web Clipper – I use evernote as my online notebook where i clip different useful information that i come across into.
Bitwarden – my password manager of choice