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Sometimes it seems like the planning that goes on for a project is more work than the actual project itself. Trying to keep track of all the tasks and sub-tasks, allocating necessary resources, and arranging the people to do the work can become its own project. Then I suppose you have to figure out how to manage that project, and on and on….

GanttProject is a free project scheduling and management tool. As its name suggests, it's easy to picture your project when it's displayed as a Gantt chart. Those horizontal bars make it easier to visualize dependencies and critical path as you try to figure out how you're ever going to get this thing done with the amount of time you have available. Once you've got a handle on everything, you can export your projects as PNG images, with reports to back them up.

GanttProject is a Java app, so it should run on just about any platform with an appropriate Java runtime installed on it. To make things super convenient, there are separate packages available for Linux, Mac (OS X), and Windows systems. Or if you just want to check it out, you can even try a Web-based version in your browser.

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If you've got employees, you need to keep track of how much time they put in. If you are an employee, you want to make sure the boss knows how hard you've been working. Luckily it's easy to take care of both of these with a timeclock. Back in the day, this meant one of those machines that you had to shove a card into and have it print a time on it. Now we've got all those newfangled computer-machines, and things are easier, and dare we say more convenient?

PHP Timeclock is an online time tracking system. Running on your webserver, you use a browser to access its data input and output functions. Clocking in and out at the beginning and end of your shift is easy. Management can pull data with no muss or fuss via its admin functionality: no more having to dig through and copy data from a stack of dirty timecards, and no worry about losing them either. It generates all manner of reports, so you can be on top of your staffing needs. And this app does one thing that even the best physical timeclock can't do: it can be in two (or more) places at once. One system will serve all your locations, since it lives on a server, rather than being a bunch of discrete mechanical clocks.

A free download, PHP Timeclock needs to be installed on a server with PHP, MySQL, and Apache. You should be able to access the front-end with most modern web browsers, including Firefox and IE ver 6 or later.

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Setting up a web server probably isn't the most complicated thing you'll do in a day, depending on how you generally spend your time. Now if you decide that you also want to add a database, as well as a couple of scripting languages, the coefficient of complication may skyrocket. Well, as luck would have it, there's a way you can do that without lots of pain.

XAMPP is an all-in-one bundle that includes an Apache web server, MySQL database, as well as the PHP and Perl scripting languages. It's all pre-configured so that literally all you need to do is to install it, and go from there. It's self-contained, so it isn't going to make a mess of your system, and if you decide you need to delete it, all you have to do is kill the directory and it's gone (with Windows, as always, you should use the uninstaller to get rid of any stray bits in the Registry). You can use XAMPP to gain familiarity with the constituent tools, or as a development environment for building your next high-powered web application. What you shouldn't do, however, is put it in a production environment. As it comes straight out of the box, it has all kinds of security issues (weak passwords, that sort of thing), which while they may not be a problem on your desktop or local network, could open you up to a world of hurt if you put it out in public.

You can get XAMPP for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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Back in the day, we had to trudge barefoot through the snow uphill both directions to get to- and from school. Or at least that's what your parents would have you believe. Sure, things used to be tougher back then, but there may have actually been some advantages—and we're not talking about just the "builds character" argument from your dad. Growing your own food, building your own barn, using a non-GUI text editor. Rustic stuff.

For folks raised on Notepad and Text Edit, the notion of a command line text editor might seem like a visit to the Dark Ages. Sure, learning the intricacies of programs like vi and emacs may seem like a lot of work, but you could sure do a lot with those tools. If you want to take advantage of the power of emacs, but with the training wheels of your Mac's Aqua interface, check out Aquamacs.

Aquamacs takes the power of the emacs editor and adds the user-friendliness of a graphical interface. Rather than having to remember all the complicated commands to do simple stuff, you can just click a toolbar button to create a new file, save your edits, copy and paste text, and all that other good stuff. It features a tabbed interface, so you can work with multiple documents at once. But on top of all this newfangled prettified stuff, it's still emacs underneath, so it understands when you do hand it classic emacs commands. Sort of the best of both worlds.

A free download, Aquamacs is a Mac application. It runs under recent versions of OS X.

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If you're responsible for the care and feeding of a website, then you know all about having to move files around: upload changes to the server, download stuff that's been added remotely, add to offsite archives. Moving documents, images, and other files around like this generally involves some variation on FTP, file transfer protocol. Whether you use garden variety FTP, or one of its more secure siblings, you need a tool to make the magic happen. If you're on a Mac, this might take the form of OneWay.

OneWay is tool that lets you upload files from within Finder. It does this by installing itself into the context (right click) menu that comes up when you use your favorite file manager. If you've got locations you use often, you can add them to the menu, meaning that uploads are just a simple right-click away. It supports FTP, SFTP, and even Amazon S3, so if you've got to move files, you can probably get there from here.

You can grab OneWay for free and run it on your Mac (OS X 10.5 or better).

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One of our favorite parts of Mac's OS X is the Dock, that cool little toolbar that contains all those shortcuts to the apps you use most. If you know you're going to have to fire up Word a dozen times in the day, there's no point in having to go hunting for it each time; just drag it to the Dock and then run the app from there. The other purpose of the Dock is to show you which apps you are currently running. For each of those programs, the little application icon shows up in the Dock, reminding you of what's happening out there. After a while you can end up with an awful lot of stuff in that Dock. It might be nice to be able to wrangle some of that mess in.

Dock Dodger is a tool that can help bring order to the chaos. If you've got an app whose icon you don't want to appear in the Dock, just drag and drop it onto Dock Dodger. Next time you fire this application up, its icon won't be added to the Dock, saving space for the stuff you want to have there. If you decide you want to see that icon again, just drag your app to the dock Dodger window and drop it, and once again your application icon will show in the dock when you start it up.

A free download, Dock Dodger is a Mac application. You need to be running OS X 10.4 or later; it's distributed as a Universal Binary, so it's equally at home on PowerPC and Intel-powered Macs.

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We've seen numbers that show that no matter how many web pages there out there, and no matter how much social networking stuff is available, the most-used facility on the Internet is plain old email. Even if you factor out all the spam and junk flying around, that's a lot of email.

Zimbra Desktop is a free email client with a lot of added goodies. It does all the email stuff you'd expect, allowing you read and write messages, and work with both POP and IMAP servers. It's also smart enough to work with web-based mail services like Gmail, Yahoo, and the lot. But along with email, it's also got contact management, calendaring, and more. Think of it as being like Outlook but without Outlook's hefty price tag. And since there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, you're going to have to work pretty hard to find a machine you can't use it on.

You can download Zimbra Desktop for free. In addition, they've got big deal enterprise-size network email solutions (not free), although you don't need them to run the free app.

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In this day of information overload, subscribing to RSS feeds is a way to stay current on what's what without being totally buried in information. Getting these little snippets of info lets us decide which stories to dig more deeply into.

RSS Menu is an app that sits in your Mac's menu bar (hence the name) and helps keep an eye on your favorite RSS and Atom feeds. It runs in the background, so it stays out of your way, yet is always available. And since it's just a menu—there is no application window to look at—it's not going to take up your valuable screen real estate. It can let you know when new stuff arrives, either visually or by speaking to you. Sort and rearrange your feeds so that you can find what you're looking for. And with integration with iTunes and Safari, this could easily become the center of your connection with the world.

A Mac application, RSS Menu runs under OS X (10.4).

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When is text not text? When it's got a bunch of extraneous formatting and "stuff" mixed in with it. Sometimes that's great, but if you're writing code, or want to manipulate the text yourself, often you have to "fix" all the stuff that's there in order to then put your own stamp on it.

One way to help take care of this type of problem is with CleanHaven. This tool is designed specifically to help clean up text. Choose to change the case of words (ALL CAPS, all lower case, Title Case), sort lines in ascending or descending order, remove duplicate lines, strip out extra newline characters, and more. Sure, you could do all this stuff yourself, but why not put your computer to work for you? It's easy to paste your source into the window, press the button, and then examine your result. If you like it, you can go from there, but if not, you've still got your original. And you can run the text through multiple times, so that you can alphabetize it, and then remove all the resulting blanks lines.

CleanHaven is a free download. There are versions for Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.

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Does your desktop look like a bomb just went off: coffee cups, phones, piles of paper everywhere. What about your Desktop—the desktop on your computer? Files and folders scattered everywhere, downloads, and of course all that important stuff you don't want to lose track of. Thing is, though, now that it's buried with everything else you can't find it anywhere. You could clean house, but then what are you going to do with all that stuff.

Maybe the thing to do is to camouflage it, with Camouflage. This app takes everything and hides it for you, leaving only your Desktop wallpaper. Clicking on it will bring up a Finder window, so you know your stuff hasn't all really gone away, but at least you're not tripping over it constantly now. And if you've got so much mess that it spans several monitors, you can clean them all up at once, since Camouflage hides all that other junk as well.

Camouflage is a free download for your Mac.

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