DropLink is a new Mac app that’s in the beta stages currently, but looks very promising. Essentially it’s a droplet that sits in your Dock and lets you upload a file by dragging it to the DropLink icon. Once the upload finishes (indicated by an out-of-the-way progress bar and a Growl notification), the link is copied to your clipboard. It’s simple, yet effective reminder of the usefulness of minimal applications that can make your life that much easier.

Rating: 5/5. Perfect, great Growl integration. I can only hope this will be kept free!

DropLink.me

I was recently contacted by a certain Tiffany of TuneUp Media. After giving me a brief insight into her company’s product, I was sold. TuneUp for Mac is an excellent iTunes plugin that fills in the blanks in your iTunes library, so to speak. TuneUp will examine your music and fetch album artwork, fix the ID3 tags, and add even more information. It can also tell you about upcoming concerts for the current artist. It’s really a nice piece of software, and is perfect for anyone with a less-than-optimal iTunes library. The free version will fix up to 500 songs and add up to 50 sets of album artwork for you. An unlimited version (TuneUp Gold) is available on the developer’s site (listed below) for a very reasonable $20.

Rating: 4.5/5. Awesome program, but the user interface looks more like a website attached to iTunes.

Developer site:
TuneUpMedia.com

GrandPerspective is an awesome utility that can inspect your filesystem and graphically show you what’s taking up room. It’s extremely useful for cleaning out your Mac, and finding the chunky files on your hard drive that are just taking up space. Unfortunately, GrandPerspective is unable to reveal or delete files within the app–you have to find and delete them yourself. However, a 1.0 release is imminent, so we may see some additional functionality soon.

Rating: 4/5. Works well, but I prefer the abilities of Disk Inventory X over the speed of this app.

Developer site:
GrandPerspectiv.SourceForge.net

DownloadMonitor is an innovative little app that adds back some of the functionality lost by users of Safari. It can react to conditions of downloaded files on your computer, which is truly something that Apple should have thought of. It’s basically the download manager that wasn’t included with your browser. It has full AppleScript and Automator support, and an awesome little HUD window indicating downloading status. Pretty cool.

Rating: 5/5. Great UI, easy to use, functions well.

Developer site:
pfau-SoftwareDevelopment.de

Ghost is an excellent little utility that can work with hidden files in OS X. Ghost’s ingenious system for hiding and unhiding your own files is so obvious that I’m not sure how everyone else missed it. All you do is drag a file into Ghost, and check or uncheck to hide or unhide, respectively. Ghost also has an option to show or hide all hidden files in Finder, which is much faster than running the lengthy “defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE” command in Terminal over and over. This app is a must-have for people who need to work with hidden files on their Mac.

Rating: 5/5. Works fast, drag and drop is perfect, and the icon is awesome.

Developer site:
Opt-6.com/Ghost.html

DiffMerge is an awesome file comparison tool that lets you select two sources, and compare them. You can compare folders, individual files, or even several files at once. Once compared, you can merge them (which works quite well, I might add), or choose from a few other options. Overall it’s a great app with awesome performance, and is definitely worth a glance if you need to merge several items. As an added bonus, it comes with an equally awesome command line tool.

Rating: 4.5/5. Really nice app (and easy to use!), but the user interface is a little aged.

Developer site:
SourceGear.com/DiffMerge

PackageAssistant is a very new, nice little app that Apple should have included with Leopard. Essentially it checks your package receipts to see what Installers (.pkg or .mpkg files) you have run in the past. From here, you can verify that they’re installed correctly (represented by a green dot) or have been altered (represented by a red dot). Then, if you want, you can uninstall straight from PackageAssistant. While this app is in its early stages, I can see a bright future for it.

Rating: 4.5/5. Window is non-resizable, but the app itself functions great.

Developer site:
Code.Google.com/P/SourApple/Wiki/PackageAssistant

iProcrastinate is an awesome assignment manager for Mac. It has a clean and intuitive interface, which helps to keep your organized for school. You can add your subjects in and color code them, then add assignments. Then you add and prioritize tasks, and it will do the rest. It has dedicated note-taking sections and a place to put files accompanying the task. You can also burn all of your assignments to a disc! The accompanying iPhone app (iProcrastinate Mobile) is also impressive. It carries over most of the features from the Mac version, and helps you stay organized on the go. The developer is currently working on making the two apps sync together, which should make for an amazing set of GTD tools at your disposal. Grab it while it’s hot, and get ready for school!

Rating: 5/5. iPhone app and syncing will top this one off.

Developer site:
CraigOtis.com/Mac
CraigOtis.com/Mobile

I hate to bring it up, but school is nearing. Fast. Since the coming year is always harder than the previous, it’s nice to have an edge. Schoolhouse can help you with that. Schoolhouse is an awesome assignment manager that has come a long way since its early versions. It features task listing, note-taking, file attachments, grade viewing, and even “classcasting”, a class-based podcasting service. Put simply, Schoolhouse can organize anything you do in school with ease, in a great, well-developed interface.

Rating: 5/5. Flawless.

Developer site:
LogansCollins.com/Schoolhouse

AcqLite is a P2P (peer to peer) app for Mac that used to be extremely popular, since it’s a nicer alternative to the notoriously bloated LimeWire. But, unfortunately it appeared as if the developer stopped updating it after the 0.2.9 release in July of 2007. But, just yesterday, the developer released version 0.3, which has vast improvements over the old versions. This one is Leopard-compatible, and is significantly faster than any P2P app out there right now. Its features are comparable to Acquisition, another nice Mac P2P app, only AcqLite is free (hence the name). If you do any P2P file sharing at all, and need a nice, free client, AcqLite is a must-have for you.

Rating: 5/5. Clean interface, easy to use, and fast.

Developer site:
AcqLite.SourceForge.net