Today’s claim to fame is a feature which many iCal users have been looking for for quite a while. It’s a small application that lives in your menu bar, and with a click, brings up a small window displaying today’s (or another day of your choice) events from one, some, or all of your calendars. To-do’s are there, (but called Tasks in Today) as well as your major scheduled events. It’s great for two reasons. One, as I mentioned before, you don’t have to have iCal open all the time. I’d much rather have this little guy open than full-fledged iCal for simply viewing events and tasks. Two, sometimes seeing too much into the future can be counter-productive to your day. This single-day approach; seeing only what you need to be productive TODAY– is a great one for productivity-minded folk like myself.

Another one of Today’s major features is full support for actually creating new events and new tasks. New events and tasks created in Today are automatically added to iCal. There is full support for alarms and even saving new ones for frequent use, however the options for running a script or opening a file at a set time are absent. Today 2.0 also brings with it support for the popular iCal alternative BusyCal, giving you the same experience you get with iCal syncing.

In the settings department, you have a good amount of customization options. Tasks can be sorted by calendar, title, priority, and due date, and you can choose to see only tasks due today, or all tasks due in the next 3, 7, 14, or 30 days. A new feature in this, the second iteration of Today.app, is the ability to display tomorrow’s upcoming events underneath today’s. Window transparency can also be set- useful if you’ve enabled the option to keep Today’s window on top of all other windows.

Something I do yearn for in a future iteration of Today, is the ability to scale down the size of the window to a truly tiny size. In order to actually view all of my upcoming events in the app in one view on my 13″ MBP, the window takes up valuable real estate. That being said, it’s just as easy to close the window and reopen from the menu bar (you can also set keyboard shortcuts), but i’d love to be able to dedicate a smaller portion of my screen to it permanently. Also, it isn’t possible to display To-do’s from a certain calendar while not displaying that calendars events. It’s either all or nothing.

All in all though, the minute I tried Today, they had me. It’s the closest you’ll get to MyDay (Microsoft’s version for it’s software suite), and provides a very rich experience for such a small app. It has the “just works” simplicity you expect from a Mac app, without any overkill. Price sits at just $21.95 for a single user. 5-computer family packs are $34.95, and upgrade licenses start at $11.95. If you’d like to try it out, a complete 14-day trial is available for download along with the full version over at Second Gear Software. Requires Mac OS 10.5+

Tidy Songs is an Adobe Air app that loads to a simple welcome screen which lets you get started pretty quickly. There’s no setup to do. Just click Start and you’re whisked off to the Main Menu where you select from 4 options: Add Album Art, Find Duplicates, Fix Your Songs, and Organize Genres. They’re all pretty self explanatory, so let’s get right into it.

Add Album Art works like a charm. It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.

Find Duplicates worked well in my tests as well. There is the option to automatically delete these duplicates according to bit rate and song length, however this one you’ll probably need to manually approve each change, especially if you have a lot of live albums where song titles are exactly the same.

Fixing songs themselves proved to be a little tricky for me. To test this functionality, I made some changes to my song titles and documented each change. All of my semi-popular music was recognized and fixed without a hitch. However, my problems arose when summoning information on more obscure bands, and if you have a lot of this kind of music, you may have to use the Manual mode here as well. I don’t fault Tidy Songs for this, as I would think this is a problem with the tracklist and information in the public database it is querying. However, if you’ve got a lot of well to semi-well-known artists in your library, Tidy Songs should have no problem clearing up any weird titles and information. Speed-wise, if you’re going to let it do its thing automatically, and depending on how many songs you have, I’d let it go overnight. In my own library of a few thousand songs, it took quite a few hours to complete its scans and fixes. Also, you can’t listen to music through iTunes while it’s cleaning, so either do it while you won’t be home, or fire up Pandora and check out some new music while you wait.

Probably the feature I found the least use for was Organize Genres. It simply allows you to change all of the variations on a genre to one. For example, I have varying genres of Rock in my library such as Alternative-Rock, Alt-punk, Indie, Indie-Pop, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock¦you get the picture. It offers to take all of these and combine them into one category of its or your choosing.

While fixing, you can tell Tidy Songs to skip songs with certain words as well, giving you an added “Don’t touch” filter. All in all, the app works great. Compared to TuneUp, my experience was above and beyond what I ever expected it to be, and that experience comes with a price tag. $39 to be exact. Worth it? I’d say yes. Especially if your library is big and in rough shape. You could spend days retagging and reorganizing a large iTunes library- let Tidy Songs do it for you.

Best of all, Wireshark is available for absolutely free, no strings attached. It’s quite amazing the work that goes into this program, and networking aficionados all over the world continue to develop this killer network utility.

One drawback though, for some, is the process of actually getting it running properly in 10.6. I had trouble myself, and felt I needed to share the process I used to get it up and running in Snow Leopard.

Let me just share my setup first of all. I’m running Snow Leopard on a MacBook Pro (late 2009), with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the standard allotment of 2 GB of RAM. Your individual results may vary if you’re coming at this from a different operating system. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got a different setup and this isn’t working for you, and I’d be glad to help you out as best I can. So without much further ado:

Things you’ll need to get started (with this tutorial):

Administrator privileges on a Mac running OS 10.6
Wireshark (FREE – get it HERE)

The information you’ll need is in this here video. However, I’ve outlined the major steps needed to do it below the video. Again, feel free to leave any variation of “this didn’t work for me.” in the comments.

1.) Download, Mount, Copy Wireshark to Applications folder
2.) Copy CHModBPF folder into StartupItems directory
3.) Show hidden files and folders
4.) Navigate to /usr/local – if no /bin exists, you’ll need to create one¦
5.) Enter Terminal and type the line: cd /usr/local
6.) Hit enter and type: sudo mkdir “bin”
7.) From the Command Line folder that is in the disk image, copy all of the binary files themselves into /usr/local/bin
8.) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit enter: cd /Library/StartupItems
9.) Then: sudo chown -R root:wheel ChmodBPF
10.) Open Wireshark and navigate to Edit>Preferences>Name Resolution>SMI (MIB and PIB Paths) and click Edit
11.) Click New and enter: usr/share/snmp/mibs
12.) Click OK, then Apply, then reboot your Mac.

Once your machine comes back up, you should be good to go!

Disclaimer: We do not endorse using Wireshark or any other network monitoring utility for illegal purposes.

With features such as Piles and four walls and a floor to throw your stuff around on, BumpTop’s interface is a versatile workspace to organize your files. It isn’t a Finder replacement, but if you like to organize your stuff in plain sight, such as multiple files relating to a project, or a bunch of pictures, you can resize them and place them on any of BumpTop’s surfaces. It’s also easy to quickly jot a note and literally throw it up onto the wall in front of you, sticking there to remind you about your son’s soccer game in two hours.

It’s a nice interface to be sure. It’s pretty, smooth, and is more like a 3D Spaces iteration for the files on your desktop. You can customize the images on each wall, and even double click the background to get a traditional 2D view of your desktop.

There’s two versions, free and paid (obviously). The pro version is the one with the Multitouch Gestures, like pinching to resize items, and swiping through individual items in your Piles. You also get Find-As-You-Type, useful for locating lost items in a crowded desktop. After all, you’ve got 5 surfaces to store stuff on, and if you utilize them, you’ll need this feature for sure. BumpTop also stays out of the way when using Spaces, Exposé, and QuickLook, letting you use these awesome integrated OS X features without a hiccup.

As much as I was impressed with the smoothness of the transitions between surfaces, I found the interface to be a little congested when used on my 13-inch MacBook Pro. Shrinking the files helped, though I liked the preview of photos, and shrinking those too much sort of killed that experience.

Additionally, I’m an avid GeekTool user, and with files in stacks and piles and on walls and such, the text files I display on my desktop with GT are obscured to say the least, if not unreadable and unusable sometimes.

Overall, it’s a great experience for those who love to see their files in front of them and use their mouse or trackpad. Quicksilver lovers will no doubt be unimpressed, but those loving nice graphics and wanting something new to try out against their traditional Mac desktop will be glad they gave it a shot. BumpTop is free to use without the Multitouch and other features, and the all-inclusive Pro version will run you 29 bucks.

1.) Keep Track of Your Work and Responsibilities

If you’re a student, or just have a lot of projects to keep track of, make sure you check out our article on 5 Apps For Staying Productive At School, where you’ll find our recommendations for assignment wrangling. Having one of these apps is invaluable, no one can remember everything all of the time. For a more simplified to-do manager, check out Remember The Milk. It’s an internet-synced to-do manager that will sync with as many computers as you want. Just set up your account, install one of the many services RTM offers, and get organized.

2.) Sync and Organize Your Digital Devices

iTunes is great for the iPods and iPhones in your life, but what about your other devices? You have a few options. Use the junkware that came with them to sync your music, photos, and movies, or take charge with a Mac application that makes its living from picking up where inadequate software leaves off. One answer lies in DoubleTwist (Mac OS X – Free). An open-source project that is still under heavy development, DoubleTwist supports Archos media players, the Palm Pre, Sony PSP, INQ1, G1 and Android phones, select Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson phones, as well as Blackberry, WinMo 5.0 and 6.0, as well as iPod and iPhone models! Just drag and drop for file and playlist transfer to your mobile device. New devices are being supported all the time, and you can request a feature or device in their forums.

3.) Get Access To Your Computers From Anywhere!

An important aspect of being organized is having easy access to all of your information and tools that you need to get things done. Several Mac apps make this idea easy to implement. Start with a solid VNC app for remote control of your computers from any corner of the globe. Try out the free apps JollysFastVNC or Chicken of the VNC, which we featured in our huge list of awesome Mac Freeware from last year (many applications in there are still very relevant today). Both will let you see and control your home or work computers from anywhere with an internet connection.

Also, grab an FTP client for easy transfer of files across your computers. I fully recommend downloading the free Cyberduck or the $28 YummyFTP, both of which work equally well in my own (and others) experiences, for file transfer to your website or personal machines.

4.) Back Up Your Files…twice.

If you aren’t doing this by now, get to it. Like, as soon as you’re done reading this paragraph. I cannot stress the importance of having multiple backups of your stuff. Having another copy of your data off-site (away from home, work, wherever) is equally important, and can save you in the case of a fire, Act of God, or robbery. In addition to Apple’s own Time Machine, there are many online services available, such as Dropbox (2GB Free; plus Paid tiers for more storage) and Mozy(2GB free as well as paid levels with more storage). Both do a great job of running silently from the menu bar, backing your stuff up to their servers as you go. So go get one! I think I hear a tornado coming…

5.) Keep your Mac up-to-date with AppFresh.

Spend less time keeping all your applications updated! Let AppFresh take care of it for you! AppFresh is a free indispensable utility that will index your applications and find their updates, all you have to do is click download and it installs them for you! Just run it once a week or so, and enjoy an quick update experience.

6.) Lock Down Your Finances

Whether or not you choose to do this completely digitally, there is something to be said for a software solution to one of human-kind’s most stressful topics – money. There are standalone apps to help you wrap your head around where you’re spending all that hard-earned dough (that thing you’re typing on, maybe?). For that, I recommend apps like SEE Finance($20), iCash($39.90), and even Quicken 2007($69.99) can help you get ahold of and track your finances. These apps serve their purpose well, and are all worth at the very least a look-see. From simple budgeting to keeping track of interest and investments, they’ll provide a good user experience and some allow you to download transactions from your bank’s website.

If you want to see up the minute updates with your current balances and lines of credit in an easy to see visual environment, I recommend Mint (free). Being able to have everything in front of you is invaluable. Mint provides you with complete breakdown of all your account activity over time, and gives you readouts of where you currently stand, all in a cross-platform web interface. It can’t get much easier than this, folks.

The UI is different, to put it simply. The default display is a CoverFlow-esque view of all your music in alphabetical order by artist then by album, just like in iTunes. To view tracks on a particular album, double click the album, and a track list slides out to the right.

I do appreciate what the developers tried to do with it, but it felt a little counter-intuitive at first. There is a slight learning curve associated with using the app to it’s fullest potential.

Also, there’s no way to view just a tracklist of all your music- your only option is the CoverFlow-like view. So if you rip your music from CD and don’t bother with the artwork, you might end up with something like this:

Full Screen mode could also use some improvement. Now, I realize this is a compact media player, so it’s not supposed to be ripe with features, but there’s a few that should be there to begin with. First of all in Full Screen, there’s no way to navigate your music other than scrolling through the album artwork. No quick-find, no search. If you have a lot of music, you’ll understand where this gets frustrating quickly. Also, within full-screen mode, there’s no way to do anything else, really- save navigating, sorting, playing and pausing. Along with a search box(at minimum), I’d like to see an on-screen volume slider, and a few control buttons: play/pause, forward and previous track.

One of Everplay’s biggest advantages is that it taps right into your iTunes library. No need to organize or reorganize your digital media files. If it’s the way you want it in iTunes, you’re all set. However, this could also be it’s biggest DIS-advantage, as there’s no way to add, delete, or reorganize media whatsoever. You can indeed play your movies and videos in Everplay, but be warned. There is no way to play DRM video content at all. This means any movies or TV shows you have in your iTunes library, you will have to play in iTunes. It’s something iTunes Store lovers will surely be a little disappointed about.

Another major plus in Everplay is its integrated Last.fm features. If you use Last.fm, you’ll be able to scrobble from right within the app, listen to radio, and find similar artists. Also, events from your Last.fm calendar can handily be sent right over to iCal.

Everplay has two modes for playing music, regular track order, and Jukebox Mode. Jukebox mode acts¦well like a jukebox. Any track that is double-clicked is put into a queue for immediate play after the currently playing track ends. Great for parties, it’s basically creating an on-the-go playlist, and you can view or clear the upcoming tracks in the Upcoming menu drop-down. Jukebox Mode, however, is Everplay’s only playlist creation tool, and won’t save when you exit the app. To create a new playlist to use in Everplay, you’d have to do it in iTunes.

To sum things up, this app, like most of its competition excluding iTunes, is a great idea, but its execution is lacking nearly everywhere. It’s compact for sure, but there’s just too much missing. Were some of the missing features implemented in further releases, I’d fully recommend this software, but for now, stick with iTunes. Everplay is free to try, and $19.95 for a license from Snarb.tk

1. Journlr – Mac OS X only- Free/$35

While development of Journlr has ceased, it is almost an essential note-taking app for your college courses. It combines the ability to type notes, record audio, video, and take photos simultaneously. All media can be incorporated into a single page of notes and organized in many ways. Smart folders let you keep track of classes, sections, chapters, or whatever you choose to organize by. Notes can then be exported to email, your blog, your iPod, or iWeb if you so choose. Additionally, audio recordings of lectures or discussions can be exported directly into a Journlr playlist in iTunes. Journlr is available for free, but a license can still be purchased from the website.

2. Schoolhouse 3 –  Mac OS X only – $14

We reviewed Schoolhouse earlier this year, and it only makes sense to feature it here again. Since our last review, it has been upgraded to version 3.1.2 from 2.2 in the last review, and it now features a slightly refined look and feel, as well as MobileMe syncing and an autosave feature. Most useful for keeping track of all your assignments and their due dates, you can also write notes, and its great for project organization utilizing the ability to add documents and other media to a project’s page. Other features include grade tracking and a multitude of customization options. Schoolhouse has now moved to a paid model that is set at a quite reasonable $14. You can try it for free with a limit of being able to input 20 assignments, but I highly recommend shelling out the 14 bucks and getting an incredibly useful organizational app. Schoolhouse is available from Logans Collins at their website.

3. iHomework – Mac- Free – iPhone/iPod Touch- $0.99

If you’re looking for an application that will wirelessly sync between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac, look no further. This little app works great with just what you think…homework. While there are little to no note-taking abilities, iHomework allows you to enter all the class info you can think of, such as dates, times, instructors (mobile only), and places. The Add Work button is where you input all of your new assignments and their corresponding information like type of assignment, due date, course, and even lets you input your grade for a particular assignment. One of the great features of this app is the ability to send any and all events to iCal. The wireless syncing process is fairly straightforward, although it could use some adjustment, as the first time around is a little confusing. iHomework for OSX is free from their website, and the iHomework mobile version is just 99 cents from your friendly neighborhood App Store. Well worth it.

4. EtreTask – Mac OS X only – Free

EtreTask is a dead-simple to do list for your Mac. There’s not much to say about it, but if you’re looking for a to-do list only, this is definitely the app for you. It’s lightweight, and couldn’t be more straightforward. Input a note, and check it off when it’s done! EtreTask is free from Etresoft.

5. Circus Ponies Notebook – Mac OS X only – $49.95

Regarded in the Mac community as one of the best note-taking/organizational applications out there, Notebook is a customizable, versatile masterpiece. Upon initial launch, you’re presented with a multitude of templates from which to get started. Want to get organized at college? Notebook sets up a notebook just for you, with tabs for each class, and a contents page to show you where to input your information. Want to write a novel? Plan a trip? Keep a journal? Keep track of recipes? There’s a template for that. Notebook is $49.95 from Circus Ponies for an individual license, an academic license (with valid academic credentials) is $29.95 and a family pack can be had for $99.95.