1Password is a tool that I personally couldn’t live without. It helps you to remember, store, and generate secure passwords – so that you never have to bother with creating or remembering passwords! If you’re like me, you were, or still are, using the same password for everything. It’s incredibly insecure, yet there seems to be no way to remember secure passwords. 1Password helps solve this problem.

The main feature of 1Password is the ability to store passwords. Yet, the cool part is how 1Password integrates with your web browser. It integrates smoothly into most web browsers, so that you never have to enter a username or password. By simply pressing a keyboard shortcut, 1Password will automatically fill in and submit your username and password – so that you don’t have to deal with the hassle of remembering and typing a password out.

Sure, remembering passwords is great, but remembering secure passwords is even better. 1Password includes a secure password generator to assist you in creating the most secure password possible. It’s extremely quick and simple. You can set how many characters long you want your password, and if you want to include numbers, letters, characters, or a combination. Then, you simply hit a generate button and a password will be created. You can then copy the password or have 1Password insert it into the webpage for you.

Another strength of 1Password is its ability to remember things other than passwords, such as credit cards, identities, and secure notes. Now, instead of entering your credit card or bank information every time you want to purchase something online, you can simply have 1Password fill in the information for you. The same concept applies to profiles, where you can have 1Password instantly fill out the information on a web form. 1Password will also securely store information for you in a note. This is great for keeping track of important information that you don’t want to leave unsecure.

Now, when you’re entrusting almost all of your personal information in a single application, you want to be sure that it’s safe and secure. With 1Password, you don’t have to worry. All of your information is password protected and stored inside of Mac OS X’s default keychain (unless you opt-in to use the Agile Keychain). In order to access any information, or have 1Password auto-fill anything, you must know a master password. You can have 1Password ask you for the master password everytime you autofill, or open up the application, or you can have it simply remember the master password. There is also security in knowing that 1Password helps protect you from phishing scams, as well as keyloggers. You see, the app matches up passwords to webpages based on URL’s. If a phishing scam is in action, an incorrect URL will be used. So, 1Password won’t auto-fill the form for you and you’ll know that something is wrong.  Also, since the keyboard is not being used to enter secure information, keyloggers aren’t able to track your passwords.

There is also an iPhone version of 1Password – for taking your passwords and data with you. While you can’t autofill passwords in the native Mobile Safari browser, you can have 1Password go to the site and auto-fill within the app. It syncs with the desktop client through the Wi-Fi network. It’s nifty and a nice way to take your data with you. Also, 1Password can sync using MobileMe if you have multiple macs.

You can find 1Password from Agile web solutions at a price of $39.95 for a single user, $69.95 for a family pack, as well as a free demo, and education pricing. Go ahead and give 1Password a try – you won’t regret it!

The menubar, like the dock, is an integral part of Mac OS X. Besides the basic function of providing menus in applications, the Menubar can do a ton. By default, the right side of the menubar displays a clock, the spotlight icon, Airport status, volume, as well as a MobileMe sync status, Time Machine Backup status, and Fast User Switching if you enable them. While this is great, many developers have taken the menubar to the next level. Here’s a look at my essential menubar apps.

Caffiene
Caffiene is extremely simple, but very useful. You simply click it to tell your computer to not go to sleep. This is extremely handy when watching online video, reading a long article, or anything else for that matter. It is a great way to maintain good energy saving preferences, but not be annoyed when your monitor goes to sleep a minute into watching House on Hulu. When you’re done, you simply click the caffiene icon again to turn it off. [Download]

Jumpcut
If you’re like me, you’re always using copy & paste. Jumpcut keeps a record of what you’ve copied, so that you can paste it later – even if you’ve made a new copy. It works really well, and even has a keyboard shortcut that pops up with a bezel – so that you don’t necessarily have to click on the menu bar icon. I’ve gotten it to remember up to 100 items, which is stunning. [Download]

SoundSource
Rouge Amoeba developed a really handy tool for controlling audio input and output on your Mac – straight from the Menubar. You can choose which source you want to play audio to/from, and how loud you want to hear it. It’s a big step up from Apple’s default menubar volume control. You can also use it to quick launch Audio MIDI Setup or Sound Preferences. [Download]

Alarm Clock 2
I’ve begun to use my mac as my default alarm clock, thanks to Alarm Clock 2. It integrates with your iTunes library, so that you can wake up to your favorite music. You can set recurring alarms, and enable features such as “easy wake” and of course the “snooze”. What really makes Alarm Clock 2 superb is that you can also set timers and stopwatches. I can’t tell you how many times I use Alarm Clock 2, it’s just become an automatic part of my day. [Download]

All of these apps were solely designed for the menubar, and best of all – they’re free! There are a ton of really spectacular apps that utilize the menu bar really well such as Evernote, Skitch, LittleSnapper, and so forth but these all have regular app interfaces that go along with them. The apps mentioned above are specifically for the menubar. They’re minimalistic but get the job done well, ad worth a download.

What’s better than an instrument? A virtual one. The ocarina app from Smule is a virtual recreation of what Wikipedia defines as an “ancient flute-like wind instrument”. It’s a nifty time-wasting app that’s packing some pretty sweet features.

The playing interface is super simple – four “holes”, or finger positions and a menu button. To begin playing, all you have to do is blow into the built-in microphone on the iPhone. I haven’t tested it with an iPod touch or any other types of mic’s, but my guess is that they would work fine.

While it may seem as if this is all that Ocarina does, it does much more. There are many built in tutorials, recording functionality, options and preferences, as well as a virtual map to hear what other users are playing. It works really well.

You’ll be able have plenty of fun just tinkering with the Ocarina as it is, but it can actually be used to play songs. There’s an array of sheet music available on the Smule Website, where users submit the finger covering patterns of their favorite songs. Once you get started playing, you can’t stop.

This app may not be for everyone, but those who like it, love it. Plus it’s only $0.99, so why not give it a shot? It’s available for download in the App Store.

Live Video Streaming is a new phenomenon hitting the internet by whirlwind. However, watching these streams has been mostly limited to watching at the desktop. That all changes with the release of the new Ustream.TV viewing app.

There are two main functions of the Ustream viewing app – watching live streaming and chatting. Broadcasting Live from your iPhone is not available, yet. The video quality is decent, and connecting to a stream can actually go quite fast. The chatting function is decent, and can be viewed either at the bottom or to the left of the video stream, depending on which orientation you’ve set the iPhone at.

As well as the app works, you can only use it when connected to WiFi. Forget watching a live stream via 3G or EDGE. While this could be an annoying decision, network speeds are probably too slow to watch live video.

Upon original 1.0 release, Ustream did not include support for full screen viewing, but have since included that in a 1.1 release. Navigating and viewing profile pages is currently not supported, and navigating to find recorded videos can be a pain. I’ve experienced a few problems with crashing, but not an excessive amount.

Available in the app store, the Ustream app is Free and definitely worth a download.

Squirrel, an Apple Design Award winner, is a personal finance application for Leopard. The application is powerful and has a clean, minimalist interface. While this product is not yet a 1.0 release, it contains many slick features and helps you to track your personal finances easier.

Like a normal personal finance app, Squirrel allows you to track your money over several accounts and account types such as savings, checking, cash, credit cards and friend accounts. In each account, you can activate “netbanking” where you enter the URL of your financial institution, and then can quickly jump to your account online while still inside Squirrel. You can switch back and forth between your online account and the local Squirrel database by simply clicking a tab in the top right corner of the main window.

Each transaction has the ability to be tagged and added into an category. Tags allow you to track certain types of purchases, like if you tagged your iTunes purchases with “Media” or “iTunes”. Categories work in a similar fashion. There is also a notes field for each transaction so that you can jot down anything you want to remember about the specific transaction.

These tags and categories can be used further in reports and smart folders. Reports give you information about your income and spending over a selected period of time. For instance, you could have a report for the entire year, and a report for the current month. Smart Folders are used to organize transactions based on varying qualities – similar to how smart playlists are used in iTunes.

In Squirrel, you are given the ability to set up budgets and scheduled transactions. Budgets utilize categories and tags to track your spending in various user-set up areas. You can set up a maximum amount of spending per area, and then Squirrel will show you how your spending compares with your outlined budget. Scheduled transactions can be set up for recurring transactions, like bills, and then assigned to specific accounts. There are other minor features in Squirrel, such as the ability to import various file types and to search throughout the application.

One of the coolest things about Squirrel, is how Leopard’s Core Data, Core Image, and Core Animation are utilized to produce graphs and charts instantly. A bar graph is displayed in each account and smart folder to show the account balance and trends that occur over time. In the reports, pie charts are shown to give indication of what percentage of your income comes from certain areas, or where you’re spending the majority of your money.

While Squirrel is an amazing product, there are some negatives. For starters, the ability to export your data is missing. If further down the road Squirrel is left unsupported and you have to switch to another finance application, it will be a major pain to try and either transfer the data or re-enter the data. Proprietary formats are not a good thing. There is also no syncing between multiple macs. MobileMe syncing is almost a necessity now. A minor complaint is that when you assign a dollar amount to a budget, you must re-enter the amount each reporting period versus Squirrel automatically setting the budget amount.

All in all, Squirrel is a great personal finance app, and one of my personal favorites. The program does have its flaws, but it hasn’t been officially released as a 1.0 product yet. You can download a copy, or purchase a license for €14,99.