The simplest solution to this is to manually position and size the windows of your applications so you can view two or more at once.  Arranging application windows manually quickly becomes tedious, due to the many events that can occur in a modern operating system which cause your application windows to be moved around, re-sized or moved to another monitor.

The solution to this problem is using Window Management utilities which allow you to easily re-size and move application windows around, typically using key combinations.  These utilities exist for most operating systems for Mac OS X the window management utility is called SizeUp, the equivalent utility for the PC is called WinSplit Revolution.  I use both of these applications daily, WinSplit is freeware but SizeUp costs a minimum of $4.99 and its worth every cent.  Each utility has some unique features: WinSplit allows you to chain several window configurations on a single key combination and SizeUp allows you to set up a key combination for moving windows between monitors.

I would struggle to maximise my use of one or more large monitors without a Window Management utility.  Hopefully one day this functionality will be built into operating systems as large monitors become more common.  Until then Window Managment utilties are going to be an essential tool that ever serious power user needs.

Launch Bar (Mac OS X)

One thing I noticed when I switched from using Windows PCs at home to using Macs was that there did not seem to be an obvious equivalent to using the run command (Windows Key + R) to open directories, URLs and launching programs.  The built in Spotlight application can launch applications in a manner similar to run but not open applications or URLs.  Launch Bar is a Mac only application that addresses this and adds extra features like a calculator, targeted Google searches (maps, general, groups etc) to allow you to access any file or application on your Mac or URL on the web quickly and easily.  I highly recommended this application: I now wish there was a Launch Bar equivalent for Windows!

Remember the Milk (Web)

I admit I was very skeptical about a web based To-Do list application but I kept hearing people raving about Remember the Milk so I eventually decided to try it out myself.  Despite using GMail for almost a year I really was not expecting the responsive and feature-rich user interface this site provides.  There are so many little details that make this one of the most progressive To-Do list applications I have used in years e.g. entering dates is super simple: want tomorrow then enter ‘tomorrow’, want this Friday enter ‘friday’, want the 27 of February enter ‘feb 27′.   It puts grown up To-Do list applications like Microsoft Outlook to shame!

Twitter (Web)

Twitter can best be described as a micro blogging system where all blog entries (called tweets) are one hundred and forty characters or less in size.  Users can follow each other which is similar to subscribing to a blogs RSS feed.  This produces a constant stream of tweets which you can either view through your customised twitter home page or through a client like twhirl (below).  Twitter is very useful for exchanging micro updates over the course of the day with your friends and people you respect or find interesting, especially for details that you would not bother with a blog post about.  Although be careful who you follow or you may get more information about what they are currently doing than you would prefer.

Twhirl (Windows & Mac OS X)

Twhirl is a client application for twitter that runs on the adobe Air platform (essentially Flash for the desktop).  I had been using twitter via the default web user interface until last week when I switched to twhirl.  I had heard of twhirl before then but had been put off it as it used Adobe Air and I’ve been burned in the past by Adobe faulty auto update software before which had put me off free Adobe software.  Twhirl has been a very pleasant surprise in terms of quality and ease of use: I especially like the option to fade out the UI if it goes out of focus (e.g. you switch to another application).  It even has built in tools to shorten URLs, which is very useful due to twitters message length constraints.

Have you discovered any great software recently?

• Microsoft OneNote for notes.
• Microsoft Visio for technical drawings.
• Microsoft Visual Studio for programming.
• Visual Assist for Visual Studio for improved IDE functions.
• Intel VTune for profiling.
• NUnit for .Net unit testing.
• Scite text editor for scripting and XML.
• WinSplit Revolution for managing my desktop windows.
• Beyond Compare for comparing files and folders.
• Cygwin for finding things with grep.
• Paint.net for converting or resizing images.
• Workrave for not getting RSI.

Mac OS X Leopard:

• Omni Outliner for note taking.
• Omni Graffle for technical drawing.
• Kompozer for web editing.
• Photoshop Elements for image conversion and resizing.
• Maple for mathematics.
• Idle for python programming.
• PyUnit for python unit testing.
• Spaces for managing my desktops.
• Skype for talking to relatives.
• Anti-RSI for not getting RSI.

Both:

• Microsoft Office for documents and work email.
• Microsoft Messenger for communicating with workmates.
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection for working remotely.
• Mozilla Firefox for the web.
• Google Gmail for personal email.
• Perforce for source control.
• NovaMind for mind mapping.
• iTunes for music and podcasts (iPod at work).