ExpanDrive

I mentioned ExpanDrive in a recent post. It makes a remote server connected via SFTP, FTP or Amazon S3 seem like a USB drive plugged into your Mac. Everything happens in the Finder, so it's a more elegant solution than utilities like Cyberduck or Transmit (although it presumably lacks some of the advanced features of those, e.g. file permissions control). It's probably the best way to edit remote files in TextMate (which lacks an integrated FTP client like BBEdit or Coda).

There are two reasons for another post about ExpanDrive:

1. I found a coupon code that gives $10 off the usual $39.95 price, which is valid at the time of this post, but could expire at any time: 6NI1DW5ZKW233HYI
2. Another utility MacFusion appears to be very similar to ExpanDrive (MacFUSE does the heavy lifting for both) but is free.

Perhaps one day, Apple will build this functionality into the Finder... Also, I notice that there is a version of ExpanDrive for Windows too, so I guess Windows Explorer doesn't support SFTP/FTP out of the box either (not that I know or care about that).