We are introducing a new weekly feature for Kibbles & Bytes: *Recommended Site of the Week*. It’s very common for us to recommend websites to our friends, customers, and colleagues. In many cases, these previously-unknown sites become favorites to the people to we’ve recommended them to.{?}
These recommended websites will mostly be Mac and technology-oriented, with an occasional Vermont, dog, or environmental site mixed in as well. Very rarely a totally random (but useful, fun, or innovative) site will be recommended instead.
We already have a huge long list of sites we think you’ll enjoy, so we might double up on recommendations as we initiate this column.
This week, in keeping with the following article (Top 10 Free Mac Apps), I want to recommend “AlternativeTo”:http://alternativeto.net. AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software for Mac, Windows, and Linux. In that regard, “AlternativeTo”:http://alternativeto.net is superficially similar to other websites for finding new Mac software (“Versiontracker”:http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ and “MacUpdate”:http://www.macupdate.com/ are great for this).
However, instead of listing thousands of apps in a list in a category, “AlternativeTo”:http://alternativeto.net makes each application into a category. They say “Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you’re not satisfied with. And the “blog posts” are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.”
Indeed, this collaboratively generated database has helped me find awesome alternatives to expensive programs. However, it has also helped me find open source programs that have extended the usefulness of commercial apps, such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and even Final Cut Studio.
Check out “AlternativeTo by clicking here!”:http://alternativeto.net
