OpenTTD is an Open Source clone of Transport Tycoon Deluxe

If you’ve just got yourself a new Mac and totally clueless what to install, this article is for you. If you are looking for alternatives for some applications you are currently using in your Mac, the following list might come in handy too. This week, we’d like to showcase you a list of useful yet free applications you can install for your Mac. Full list after jump.

MindNode Pro is an elegant and simple-to-use mindmapping application for the Macintosh. It was created with the user in mind and features a very simple and intuitive user interface that lets the user focus on expressing and developing ideas. Nearly no time is required to learn the interface.

Letterbox is a plugin for Apple's Mail.app that takes advantage of your widescreen monitor. It rearranges the interface into three vertical columns.

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge!

Anxiety is a super-lightweight To-do list application for Mac OS X Leopard that synchronizes with iCal and Mail. Its aim is to provide a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Shelf will look at the current foreground application, and try to figure out if what you’re looking at corresponds to a person in your Address Book. Then it’ll tell you things about them.

A list of Mac OS X screensavers

Let’s limit our attention to one application—any application—at any time. Let’s make it easy to change focus when we have to. Let’s allow ourselves to bring other apps up quickly if we need them, but put them out of sight again just as quickly. Let’s rediscover how to focus, and get back to thinking.

Pingus is a free Lemmings-like game covered under the GNU GPL. It features currently 22 playable levels and runs under a wide variety of operating systems (Linux, Windows, etc.)

This simple application activates the Fast User Switching feature built-in to Mac OS X. After clicking on MacLoc, it will appear that you’ve logged out, however upon entering your username and password, all open documents and applications will be right where you left them. MacLoc is the perfect solution when you need to step out of the room for a moment.

It’s main purpose is to fire off a Growl notification each time devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac, and includes support for FireWire, USB and filesystem volumes (i.e. disks) as well as Bluetooth devices and network interfaces. Unfortunately, to make the best of use of Hardware Growler, you will have to do some work to get it installed properly.

Every Mac user has noticed it; over time, your system slows down. This is particularly true in these days of constant security updates, as replacing operating system components not only increases file fragmentation, but also creates a more insidious problem—over time, the operating system itself ends up scattered all over your disk. iDefrag solves these problems and more, by defragmenting and optimizing your Mac’s filesystem.

I’m using a fairly simple mailbox structure in Apple Mail. In each of my IMAP accounts, I’ve created an “Archive” mailbox. Once a day or so, I move all the unflagged, read messages from each inbox to the corresponding Archive mailbox for that account. Here’s an AppleScript that automates this inbox sweeping. It assumes that every IMAP account (including .Mac accounts) has an Archive mailbox.

Path Finder is an award-winning file browser and management application for Mac OS X. If you've ever wished Apple's Finder just did *feature X* or *Y*, Path Finder may be what you've been looking for.

Cost aside, the only reason to choose a desktop Mac over a laptop is if you’re never going to want to use your Mac anywhere but where you’ve parked it. If you’ve ever wished you could take your Mac with you, whether it’s to your couch or across the globe, a laptop can give you flexibility that no desktop system can.

There are a million things people take for granted when talking about either Lightroom or iPhoto – for starters, that one is a professional tool and the other is a toy. But toys can become quite sophisticated, and professional tools tend to go mainstream as technology matures – plus photography is a field where that distinction is fast blurring, to a point.

So, when I got the Dell mini 9 all I wanted to do was put Leopard on it. With a little bit of tinkering and some help from a good blogging buddy Kevin Tofel I was able to painlessly install 10.5.4 on the little guy.

Plex bridges the gap between your Mac and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats as well as online streaming audio and video. The real power of Plex is found in its library features: Organize your media into versatile libraries, automatically retrieve metadata from the Internet, and display your libraries using one of the visually stunning skins.

Never miss a hot track again. Peel is an MP3 blog reader and player rolled into one. Subscribe and stream music the minute it becomes available!

ScreenCastsOnline is your one stop shop for Mac video tutorials to help you get the most out of your Mac.

Play is an application for playing and managing audio files.

Tag is a metadata editor for FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Monkey's Audio and WavPack files.

Max is an application for creating high-quality audio files in various formats, from compact discs or files.

How to modify your Gnome Linux Desktop to look like OSX desktop.

Simplify your finances with Moneydance, the groundbreaking personal finance manager! Whether you want to organize your finances, manage your budget, track your portfolio, or just automatically balance your checkbook, Moneydance is the solution for you.

A lot of people have been moving to the Mac over the past few years, so a while back I thought I'd jot down a few notes about my experience over the last five years or so.