Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet… most designers probably have these few words embedded in their heads from seeing them over and over. This is dummy text, otherwise known as Lorem Ipsum. I’m not going to give you a history lesson, but it is helpful to know that it is in Latin — because most people just think that it’s gibberish. When you do a Google Search on ‘Lorem Ipsum’, the first hit is Lipsum.Com. Now, don’t get me wrong, Lipsum is a great resource for getting chunks of the text and learning more, but there are other websites out there that can do an even better job as well. So, here they are — alternatives to Lipsum.Com.

1. LoremIpsum.Net

LoremIpsum.Net is a small and simple static site that provides you with a decent sized passage without having to use a generator. The site also provides an all caps version of the text, as well as translations, and an explanation of what this famous passage means.

What Sets it Apart: Very Simple. No Generator Needed.

2. Lorem-Ipsum.Info

The main site of lorem-ipsum.info contains general info as well as translations. They also have a generator that looks pretty nice. It lets you choose Lorem Ipsum in a different language and the amount of words/paragraphs that you want to generate.

What Sets it Apart: Generates text in different languages.

3. Malevole Text Generator

This is a text generator that makes real paragraphs, not lorem ipsum! I don’t know what it does make, but it is readable English and provides pretty balanced text (graphically). You have the option to create 1 to 5 paragraphs.

What Sets it Apart: Creates dummy text that is in English.

4. Lorem Ipsum Generator

This Lorem Ipsum Generator creates HTML markup, as well as giving you dummy Text. Because of this it will help you perfect your web typography with added b, i and p tags.

What Sets it Apart: Adds various different tags

5. jHTML-Ipsum

This is a jQuery plugin that will create HTML elements using Lorem Ipsum. It dynamically creates the text, so you don’t have to end up removing all of the Lorem Ipsum later. Helps figure out how you will style your web type and CSS.

What Sets it Apart: ‘Make your own’ solution

6. WP Dummy Content

This is a WordPress plugin that generates dummy posts when developing and testing your WordPress theme! It also makes fake titles, and multiple length paragraphs. In one click you have an entire set of dummy content.

What Sets it Apart: You can remove all of the dummy data in one click.

7. Lorem Ipsum Generator – Chrome Extension

This is a Lorem Ipsum Generator for Chrome! It’s quite simple and minimalist in design. You can choose the amount of words and paragraphs you want to generate.

What Sets it Apart: Convenient and easy to use.

8. Greeking Machine

This ‘Greeking Machine’ generates dummy text in many different forms. Like the others, you can choose how much text you want to generate. There are also many languages or forms to choose from, so you aren’t just stuck with boring ‘Lorem Ipsum’.

What Sets it Apart: Cool Languages like, “The Matrix, and Hillbilly”

9. Lorem Ipsum 2.0

This generator is pretty cool! It’s ‘Community generated greeking’, which means that it takes text from community powered sites and presents it to you as dummy text for you to use. It gives you pretty random results, but at least it isn’t Lorem Ipsum!

What Sets it Apart: Fun to use and play around with.

10. Blind Text Generator

This Blind Text Generator creates dummy text in many different forms! You can choose Lorem Ipsum, Panagrams, The alphabet or other English passages. It’s quite easy to use and gives you a bunch of options!

What Sets it Apart: Great if you’re tried of using Lorem Ipsum for your dummy text.

11. Lorem Ipsum Generator

This is yet another Lorem Ipsum Generator. It gives you the option to get the text as a plain text file or HTML file, and to pick how long you want your passage.

What Sets it Apart: Many different options.

12. Sample WordPress Content

This is a .xml file which you can import into your WordPress blog! It creates dummy posts, comments, categories, tags, and pages as well as adds common styling elements such as blockquotes and lists.

What Sets it Apart: Saves lots of time!

13. HTML-Ipsum

HTML-Ipsum provides code snippets rather than just plain text. Of course it features Lorem Ipsum, but it really is a great resource when designing webpages. They even have a kitchen sink, which is the body of a webpage template with necessary code structure and dummy text!

What Sets it Apart: Very useful. One click copy to clipboard.

14. Lorem Ipsum Generator

This Lorem Ipsum Generator lets you pick out how many characters, words and sentences you want. It explains lorem ipsum and shows you translated passages.

What Sets it Apart: Lets you start with something other than ‘Lorem ipsum dolor…’

15. Dynamic Dummy Image Generator

The Dynamic Dummy Image Generator is basically what the title says – a dummy image maker! It’s quite useful when creating web layouts, even for creating dummy advertisements and such. This LifeHacker post explains it all quite well!

What Sets it Apart: One of a kind and very useful!

16. Lorem Ipsum Paragraph

This is a code snippet at CSS-Tricks. It’s a paragraph of Lorem Ipsum text. Simple. Just copy the paragraph and you’re on your way! No fuss included.

What Sets it Apart: Not a Generator!

17. Lorem Ipsum Post Generator

This is a Lorem Ipsum plugin for Wordpress! This plugin can be a lifesaver when designing wordpress themes. It creates dummy posts and comments that help test your styling elements.

What Sets it Apart: Conveniently accessible!

18. The Dummy Content File

This is another .xml file that you can import into WordPress! It creates a lot of useful things like posts, pages, tags, categories and non-admin comments!

What Sets it Apart: Includes Typographic Elements in it

Do you use any of these resources? Or what about one that wasn’t listed? Let us know below!

Although there is the huge amount of free softwares available online but open-source softwares have numerous advantages, apart from their price (i.e. free), they provide you the right to modify and redistribute the software with modifications. The right to modify is important, it enables you to change the software the way you like, also there are plenty of softwares developed but never updated, in this case if you have the right to modify then they can be very handy for needy people as anybody can update it. So looking at their importance, in this article we will feature 50 essential "open-source" applications for your Mac; those which will help in performing your daily life task easily.

1. Firefox

Each and every computer user knows about Firefox which is the most used open source web browser having huge amount of extensions and add-ons, there is no need of detailed description for Firefox.

2. Camino.

Camino is another open-source web browser which ensures to provide the best possible browsing experience for Mac OS.

3. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is an other open source browser for Mac OS providing very powerful interface to enhance your browsing experience in as many ways as possible like built-in web shortcuts and unique drag-and-drop tabbed windows.

4. Thunderbird

Thunderbird glorifies your emailing experience with high level of security and privacy.

5. OpenProj

OpenProj is an open source project management solution which can be used in replacement of Microsoft Project.

6. Adium

Adium is specially developed for people who love instant messaging. It supports all major chatting platform including AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail.

7. NeoOffice

NeoOffice is a complete set of office applications mainly including word processing, presentation, drawing and spreadsheet for Mac OS X. It can import, edit and exchange files with other office programs like MS Office.

8. OpenOffice

OpenOffice is an open source office software for Mac OS X offering word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and much more.

9. Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X is a disk usage ability which shows the sizes of files and folders in a graphical way.

10 jEdit

jEdit is an open source and extensively used text editor for programmers for Mac OS X, which is written in Java.

11. Celestia

Celestia provides you a great experience of exploring the universe in three dimensions.

12. Stellarium

Stellarium is a free planetarium which shows realistic sky in 3D, exactly same what you see with your eye or any telescope.

13. Jomic

Jomic is an open source application distributed under GPL, which is a strong comic book viewer, stored in PDF, CBZ or CBR. It support various image format like JGP and PNG, it also features two page mode for better reading experience.

14. Stepmania

Stepmania is a rhythm game and dance revolution clone which can be connected to external dance pads.

15. Cocoalicious

Cocoalicious is an excellent open source del.icio.us client for Mac OS X, by using which you can manage your del.icio.us bookmarks from desktop.

16. Plex Media Center

This application reduces the gap between you Home Theater and Mac using a very awesome user interface which links you to your media files. By using Plex you can play diverse audio and video media formats and you can also stream online media.

17. Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor of Mac OS which features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for text as well as brushes. It also supports multiple layering and alpha channeling.

18. SMARTReporter

SMARTReporter reports about any hard disk failure before it actually happens. It will use Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology to do so; one warning will be enough for you to think about backing up data right then.

19. RSSOwl

RSSOwl is an easy to use and extremely flexible RSS, RDF and Atom news feed reader for Mac OS X.

20. Pixen

Pixen is an advance graphic editor specially designed to facilitate pixel-artists.

21. FreeWRL/FreeX3D

FreeWRL is an open source VRML/X3D browser which fulfils your OS X 3D graphics needs.

22. Scaletron!

Scaletron is an electronic scaling calculator specially designed for graphic and web designers to calculate enlargements and reductions of artwork.

23. ffmpegX

ffmpegX is an open source and powerful Video Transcoder for Mac OS X, which supports huge number of formats for encoding like DVD, SVCD, VOB and more.

24. OpenSong

OpenSong is an open source application developed to manage lyrics, chords, lead sheets, computer projection of your music.

25. iStumbler

You can use iStumbler on your Mac to discover WiFi routers, Bluetooth devices, Airport networks and more.

26. BibDesk

BibDesk is an open source bibliography manager for Mac, which will keep track of your bibliographic information and the associated files or web links.

27. GnuCash

GnuCash is easy to use and free financial accounting software for your personal or small-business use. It includes all major features which any accounting software should have.

28. SimplyBurns

SimplyBurns is an open source and simple CD / DVD burner for Mac OS X.

29. Juice

Juice is developed for a person who wants to listen online audio programs but cannot, due to, whatever may the reason be. Juice allows you to capture and listen to missed podcasts anytime in future.

30.HandBrake

HandBrake is a multi platform and multi threaded video transcoder specially designed of Mac OS X providing excellent output quality.

31. Inkscape

Inkscape is an awesome replacement of Adobe Illustrator which is a vector graphic editor. Features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones and other important features.

32. Cyberduck

Want to browse FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs and Amazon S3? Try Cyberduck which is a splendid open source tool for browsing.

33. Gallery

Gallery is a web-based photo album organizer, helping you to blend photo management smoothly into your own online projects. It is very easy to install and use, it includes resizing, rotating, automatic thumbnails and more.

34. Komodoedit

Komodo Edit is an open source language editor that will help you in writing codes easily. It is a multi-language editor supporting Perl, Python, Tcl, PHP, Ruby and JavaScript. It writes codes faster because of its auto-complete feature, it also provides support for adding third-party libraries.

35. JUnit

JUnit is an extremely useful framework for writing and running automated Java testing.

36. Jext

Jext is an awesome open source code editor written in JAVA. Apart from JAVA, it can edit many other types of source codes for example, source code of XHTML, JSP, PHP, Python Ruby etc.

37. Scintilla

Editing and debugging source codes are basic and fundamental need of any developer, "Scintilla" can help them in doing so. It is a free source code editing application which includes important features like error indicators, syntax styling, code completion and call tips.

38. FullSync

FullSync is n extremely expandable and customizable file synchronization and backup tool, especially made for developers but its basic functionality is very simple which can be used by everyone.

39. Angry IP Scanner

Scanning IP is very crucial for network administrators and other enterprises like banks and government agencies. For this purpose Angry IP Scanner is best choice as it is open-source and cross-platform network scanner specially deigned to scan IP addresses and ports in a very simple and fast way.

40. MUTE

Mute is a peer-to-peer file sharing network that enables us to search and download easily with privacy. It is a fast and native application with no java or python.

41. Apcupsd UPS control software

Apcupsd is software for monitoring power management and controlling most of the APC UPSes. During an event of power failure, this program will inform the user about power failure; hence giving a warning to save important data before system gets shutdown.

42. TV-Browser

TV-Browser is a digital and java-based TV guide which collects daily TV programs from internet and arranges them in a form of a TV guide. It supports a huge amount of skins and plugins, making customization comfortable. Its only purpose is no make TV guides; you cannot watch TV using TV-Browser.

43. MacLibre

MacLibre provides an excellent collection of free software for Mac OS X from categories of Internet, multimedia, Office and other utilities.

44. Moodle

Moodle is an education course management system which can be used by educators to make informative online learning websites.

45. Synergy

Synergy enables you to share a single mouse or keyboard between multiple computers having different operating systems, without any special hardware.

46. Blender

Blender is very handy 3D content creation suite, having all major features required in this kind of software including very sleek interface, awesome animation, UV unwrapping, real-time 3D game creation, Imaging and composing, shading, rendering and modeling.

47. Skim

Skim is a powerful PDF reader and note-taker for OS X, which can be used as an alternative of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

48. AppleJack

AppleJack is an effective troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X which runs in single user mode and it is very user-friendly and easy to use. With this you can troubleshoot your computer even without GUI.

49. PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a Linux New Media Award winning and powerful object-relational database system.

50. MAMP

MAMP is an easy to use program which is used to start and stop the servers. It is a powerful completion of Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X, it is very easy to remove as it do not modify any part of normal Mac OS X.

51. NetBeans

NetBeans is a free and open source program which provides, software developers, an integrated development environment. You will get every needed tool to create website, applications, professional desktop, it also supports C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby.

52. WineHQ

Windows OS has much bigger library of applications than Mac OS, so if you want to run any Windows applications on your Mac OS X then WineHQ can help you in doing so with ease and flexibility.

In the end we would like to hear your recommendations and suggestions about open-source applications. :)