It’s tough keepin’ up with the gluttony of “insanely great” Mac utilities. Everyday, VersionTracker lists scores of new apps ready to tweak, optimize, and organize all the crap on your computer. For the most part, I ignore them. Usually, they’re so buggy and poorly designed, I just send them straight to trash after trying them out.

But there are always exceptions.

I’ve just discovered a utility that I now can’t live without. It’s called 1Password, and I’ll never ever throw it in the trash. So what does it do? Here’s the tagline straight from the developer’s website:

“1Password keeps track of all web passwords, automates sign-in, guards from identity theft.”

In other words, it’s the Barry Bonds of password management utilities, injecting your Keychain with a little something extra to hit a home run. It does the basics like storing web passwords, forms, and identity information. Where 1Password really flexes it’s muscle, however, is how smoothly it lets you access that information. Direct browser integration, automatic form submissions, and synchronization all make this a must-have app for any Mac user.

Being a curmudgeony 27-year-old, I was naturally skeptical. “Great, yet another password management utility,” I thought. But after trying it out, I’m now a believer. It has just the right amount of nifty, effective, and useful features. Here are the ones I love:

1. Autofill and Auto-submit
   Although most web browsers feature autofill and password-saving functionality, 1Password takes it a step further. It not only remembers and autofills login forms, it also auto-submits them. This takes the extra step out of a sign-in process. Signing into a site is simple. Just hit a simple key command, and 1Password fills in the login information and automagically signs you in.

2. Instant Login Bookmarks
   If you’re feeling super lazy, you can create secure login bookmarks that will open the page, fill out the form, and submit it all in one step. 1Password integrates directly with popular web browsers (Safari, OmniWeb, Firefox, Camino and Flock). And yes, depending on your browser, you can launch 1Password bookmarks with Quicksilver.

3. Multiple Identities
   Don’t feel like giving out all your personal information when filling out a registration form? Use 1Password to define multiple identities, each with its own set of information. Next time you fill out a form, you can choose the appropriate persona depending on the site.

4. Digital Wallet
   If you’re tired of digging for your credit card when buying stuff you don’t need, you can take a rest. Instead, use 1Password to store all your credit card information. During checkout, just hit the 1Password button in your browser and choose the credit card you want. The utility instantly fills in your payment information automatically. Okay, if I love this feature, does it mean I shop online way too much?

5. Maximum Security
   1Password makes it so easy to sign in and save your passwords, it sounds almost scary. Could it be too easy for hackers? Nope. To thwart would-be information bandits, 1Password has several mechanisms to protect you. The application uses “military-grade” encryption and requires a master password before you can unlock any information. By default, 1Password also locks you out after 60 minutes of inactivity. And since you don’t need to type in a password to sign in to your favorite sites, you’ll bypass any hidden keyloggers installed on your computer.

I have very few gripes with 1Password. Arguably, the major downside is that there’s no Windows version. Can any PC users recommend a secure password manager that gets close?

Special thanks to Philip Foeckler for recommending this app to me.

Note: This is NOT a paid review. I bought the software myself and I liked it.

AppFresh is an utility that keeps all applications on your Mac up to date by checking the internet for new releases and makes downloading and installing them a breeze.

Here are my first thoughts:

What I like

Unlike Apple’s Software Update utility, AppFresh checks your for updates from third-party developers as well as Apple.

If you’ve used Mail.app or iTunes, the interface should be quite familiar and intuitive. In the left column are groups organized by update status and application status. To right, are your applications. A handy preview pane in the lower-left shows release notes for each app, helping you decide to update now or skip a version.

AppFresh sports shine and gradients, but doesn’t overdo it like other apps.

Best of all, AppFresh is free. Since it’s a beta, this might change in the final release. But it still beats the gouging $40/year for MacUpdate Desktop and $50/year for VersionTracker Pro.

What I don’t like

For “safety reasons,” AppFresh won’t automatically launch and run installers, so you’ll still have to manually install software updates on your own. The programmers could have allayed security concerns by simply prompting for your system password before installation, but they chose not to go this route. Or perhaps, they’re planning this for the final release.

While the user interface is familiar and easy-to-use, its use of screen real estate could be more efficient. Each listing shows a large icon and two lines of text. On my MacBook Pro, that’s only about 18 rows visible at once.

Giant icons and white space are pretty, but I’d rather see more information than superfluous eye candy.

My final word

For a every early beta, AppFresh is smooth, stable, and easy-to-use. The final release will need automatic installations, a few interface tweaks, and keep a reasonable price tag for it to truly squash the competition.

Lifehacker’s Adam Pash calls it the “the best productivity application on the market today,” aptly summarizing its power:

Quicksilver can be used to launch files and applications, manipulate data, and seamlessly plug into almost any application on your Mac so that you can perform actions as soon as you think of them in a few short keystrokes.

Sounds fantastic, but there’s gotta be a catch, right?

Yep, it’s Mac only.

Before you start shaking your fists and hurling rocks through Steve Jobs’ window, check out Scott Hanselman’s list of Quicksilver-like launchers for the PC. Scott’s done a great job summarizing each app with a review and shot. His list includes:

1. Slickrun
2. SmartStartMenu
3. slimKEYS
4. Colibri
5. Launchy
6. AppRocket
7. ActiveWords
8. Dave’s Quick Search Bar
9. Google Desktop
10. Find and Run Robot

While none of these apps perfectly replicate all of Quicksilver’s functions, Scott recommends Colibri for the closest experience.

Being a Mac junkie, I have little experience with Colibri. But do any of you? Does it truly compare to Quicksilver?

via Scott Hanselman

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled for Intel-native speed improvements and a pretty box. But my cynical imaginary friend, Horatio, tells me to not get too mesmerized by the pretty colors and Flash animations. So, I’ll be cautious and spend the next few days wading through press releases, reviews, and blog posts. No doubt, there’ll be a million blog posts on how butt-ugly or eye-soothing the new box design is.

What do you think so far? Will you upgrade with glee? Or are you dreading another bloated–and expensive–software upgrade?

Better brightness control for your Mac

As computer displays become brighter and larger, most controls for setting brightness levels remain crude. Apple’s latest displays, for example, are still very bright even at the minimum brightness setting. For designers and others spending hours in front of a computer, the inevitable consequences are sore eyes and headaches. Charcoal Design promises to solve this problem with their app, Shades.

Shades works by covering your entire screen content with a highly adjustable overlay. Consequently, you have very fine control over your display’s brightness. As one would expect, the app’s brightness slider and the cursor remain at full intensity. This makes them really easy to spot, but is sometimes annoying.

You can adjust brightness from a menu-bar item, a hover-window, or through keyboard-shortcuts. One drawback is the app’s inability to automatically hide itself when you’re making screenshots. You can work around this by temporarily increasing the brightness before taking a screenshot.

Download Shades.

1. Delicious Library
2. FotoMagico
3. ShapeShifter
4. Devonthink Personal
5. Disco
6. RapidWeaver
7. iClip 4
8. One game by Pangea
9. NewsFire (unlocked when $50k charity is raised)
10. TextMate (unlocked when $50k $100k charity is raised)

Buying all applications separately will cost you $288.75. With MacHeist’s bundle, you’ll save about $240.

Besides being one of the best software deals in ages, this bundle is a good example of how independent developers can band together to offer compelling products in an accessible package.

It’d be great to also see bundles targeted at specific niches. For example, a bundle for productivity-junkies might include Hazel, OmniFocus, and FlexTime. For designers, I’d like to see a package with apps like CSSEdit, OmniGraffle, and GraphicConverter X.

Boy, I love having a Mac.

Being a lover of exciting new software, I’m often trolling VersionTracker for the latest applications to download and try. What’s most irritating, though, is the number of clicks it takes to download a file. Here’s the typical scenario.

1. On a search results or index page, you see a program you want to download
2. You click on the filename, taking you to another page that has more details about the application
3. This page has the real download link, which you then click to download the file to your computer

That’s two clicks total, and one click too many for my lazy self. Fortunately, there’s a shortcut. To skip the extra click and download the file immediately, simply click on the filesize next to the filename.

This also works on MacUpdate as well as VersionTracker. I wish they both could make it clearer by just labeling it “Download Now,” but perhaps they want the extra page impressions.

The Michelle Pfeiffer of software, Microsoft Excel manages to remain sexy despite its age. The blog at Juice Analytics is ripe with clever ways to keep those spreadsheets looking good.

Several tips spread across three posts reveal clever ways to visualize data within spreadsheet cells. The first post covers showing bar graphs within cells. A follow-up post suggests variations on those graphs. A later post tackles a few types of charts preferred by famed information designer Edward Tufte.

The functions to create these effects also work in Google Spreadsheets and OpenOffice’s Calc with little or no modification.

Juice Analytic’s first bar graph article became popular last week when it was featured on Lifehacker and the inimitable Digg.com. I found it on the terrific infoporn data visualization blog, Information Aesthetics.

Notable new features include:

• The ability to undo closing a tab
• A built in real-time spell checker
• Improvements to security, RSS support, and built-in web search.