Being self-employed and working from home, I have the good fortune of using and running whatever programs I feel that I need or want to use or even just try out. While there are tons of programs installed on my Mac, everything from apps used to rip (MacTheRipper), strip (DVD2oneX) and burn DVD’s (Toast) to watching live TV (EyeTV), and more practical items such as banking (iBank) as well as Pages and Numbers, here are the ones that I am generally running at all times.

Beginning with the obvious first:

Firefox: Firefox 3 RC1. What else can be said here, a must have for web browsing. Within Firefox is generally Google Reader along with my blogging pages (Expression Engine and Wordpress).

Apple Mail: Standard Mail application for the Mac, while it may not be perfect it works well for my needs. I am not a fan of checking my mail within the browser and use IMAP for my many email accounts. I also store the important emails locally on my Mac, just in case.

Adium: In my opinion the best multiple chat program for the Mac, I have a few Google Chat accounts set up as well as a lightly used AIM account.

Skype: The standard for computer based VOIP calling, although I hesitate to call this daily as I am not always logged in, I tend to jump on to make a call and then disconnect after the call is over.

Twitterific: With an addiction to Twitter a dedicated app is necessary, however Twitterific is slowly being replaced by twhirl, which helps me follow the traffic on FriendFeed a little easier.

TextEdit: Basic bare bones text document creator. I do all my blogging with this and then copy and paste the post into either Expression Engine or Wordpress. I find that TextEdit is far less likely to crash then Firefox, this way I do not have to worry as much about any loss of work, while I am in the writing process.

Pixelmator: I used Photoshop Elements for so long and was comfortable and hesitant to switch, but I am so glad that I finally went ahead. Pixelmator is a wonderful tool, especially for those without the need for anything crazy like the full version of Photoshop.

TimeOut: A great app that simply reminds me when to take a break, its nice and customizable and allows you to schedule the frequency of full and micro breaks. Sometimes when I get into writing and editing posts or even checking my RSS feeds time can fly by without me even realizing. This is a life, well actually eye saver for me.

Snackr: A recent addition, I actually just installed this today and have it running up the left hand side of my second monitor. I am not 100% certain on if this will last as it may become more of a time waster than a useful app for me. Meaning it may distract me from getting my work done, time will tell on this, but first impressions is that its pretty cool. Of course being an RSS junkie I had to set it to display only feeds from the current day.

iTunes: I am a Mac user and this is iTunes, what more can I say, I have way more GB’s of music than I really need and I am subscribed to all of my podcasts using it also. I have however been listening to my Zune Marketplace tracks a lot more than my iTunes collection lately.

Zune Marketplace: Another recent edition, this one is just about a week old, and after some initial frustrations with Windows DRM issues, I am loving the Zune and wish I had picked one up sooner. The subscription model is great, I can listen to all kinds of cool tracks that I love and just do not want to have to pay for, I have been downloading all kinds of cool stuff that I used to listen to years ago. Sadly this is running on a second computer, a basic Compaq desktop PC running Windows XP, but to make me feel better about using Windows everyday, I prefer to call it a music player instead of a computer.

Well, those were my daily use apps, but like I mentioned I have and use lots more on a fairly regular basis. So whats your list looking like?