Tools of the Trade – Anthony Hortin

Anthony Hortin

of Melbourne, Australia.  Anthony is the awesomeness behind Maddison Designs! He’s a huge fan of tweeting and we suggest your follow him since he actually will reply!

Here are Anthony’s 5 favorite tools of the trade!

eWallet

One of my most used apps would have to be eWallet. This product allows you to securely store all your password and sensitive information in one easy location. It uses 256 bit AES encryption to keep all your data safe. The best thing about it, is that because it’s an iPhone app I know that I’ll have all my data conveniently with me all the time. Once you purchase the iPhone app, you can then purchase the desktop version for only a few extra dollars. Using your WiFi network, you can then keep them both synced very easily.

Seesmic Desktop & Echofon

I’m a huge Twitter fan and couldn’t get by without my Twitter fix every day. When I’m on my desktop pc or laptop, I’ll use Seesmic Desktop. When I’m out and about, I’ll use Echofon on my iPhone. I find Seesmic Desktop to be very easy to use and has some great functionality. On the iPhone, I’ve tried numerous Twitter clients but keep coming back to Echofon for it’s ease of use and long list of features. I find both of these apps extremely stable, unlike some other popular desktop & iPhone clients *cough* Tweetdeck *cough*.

Paymo Time Tracking

Paymo allows you to conveniently track your time and send invoices. Although I don’t use the invoicing side of Paymo, I do use it daily to keep track of time spent on the various projects I’m working on. One of the things I love about Paymo is that everything is online, so no matter whether I’m working at my desk or at a customer’s site with my laptop, I’m able to conveniently track my time. If I am using my laptop, I don’t need to export data across to my main workstation as everything is stored online. You can track your time via their website or install a convenient Desktop Widget to make it even easier.

SmartFTP

SmartFTP is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility that allows you to transfer files from your local computer to remote servers. Since the majority of my work is website design & development, it’s vital to have an FTP program that is easy to use, quick and reliable. I’m constantly using this application to transfer files to my own website or for uploading new client websites. It’s a great tool to use and makes file transfers very easy with their drag-n-drop interface.

Backup Maker

All too regularly you hear of people losing files due to hardware crashes, which is why I am very strict with sticking to a rigid backup routine. After trying numerous applications I came across this little gem. The main thing I love about Backup Maker is that it compresses your backup using the well-known ZIP compression algorithm. This means that not only can you open up your backup using the Backup Maker application, but you can also open the files using your “std” WinZip application as well. The zip file also ensures that you have one convenient backup file (although you can split your backup into multiple files if you’d prefer). Other backup programs I’ve tried create dozens of files. You can specify your backup schedule conveniently within the app itself, as well as the number of backup instances (ie. to overwrite older backup files). You can even backup files from Network drives which is ideal when you have a separate development server.

Jacob Haug

For this next interview we didn’t stray very far from TWS! In fact, we are featuring Jacob Haug, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer here at The Web Squeeze. You can find out more about Jacob at his website.

Here is what Jacob selected as his 5 favorite tools….

Skype

I regularly work remotely with clients, friends, and business partners. Without Skype, communicating with them would be much more of a pain. I can easily call up 5 or more people and discuss a project, or an issue I’m having. I’ve talked hours and hours with business partners and clients, sorted out mundane programming issues! It’s free, it’s high quality, it’s GREAT!

Coda

Coda is the only code editor I use on Mac. I feel like it’s built for me! I can add all my sites into Coda, and easily connect to the site and start editing. Coda even reopens documents I left open when I quit last time so I can start where I left off! Coda has great syntax highlighting, code hints, validation checking….and more. I can edit multiple files at a time, and easily be able to look up a function if I can’t remember it!

PHPMyAdmin

What would we do without PHPMyAdmin? Okay, I know what we would do, but that’s not the point. PHPMyAdmin makes managing your databases a breeze! It’s another one of those tools I can’t live without!

php.net

Everything PHP is on this website! All functions, classes, and even examples! If you aren’t using PHP.net, then you should be!

Yahoo Smush.it

Making your images as small as possible is an important aspect of making your website super fast! I love Yahoo’s Smush.it. “Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a “lossless” tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality.”

Bonus

Firefox

I am in love with Firefox, not because it’s open source, but because I feel it’s the best tool for web designers and developers! It has so many addons that I couldn’t live without and that makes managing my websites, and developing them so easy!

Do you share the love for any of these tools? Let us know how you feel!