Soothing background of melodic tones; digital wind chimes; iTunes-like interface for mood chimes with bells, crystals, violins, and nature sounds. Quirky and cool at the same time.

SonicMood creates a soothing background of melodic tones… polyphonic sounds with stimulating harmonies… to have a relaxing effect.

9WR - SonicMood: Beautiful wind chimes, mood chimes, nature sounds, sensual harmonies.

The perfect utility for Mac newbies. TinkerTool unleashes hidden features and settings in Mac OS X without damaging your system.

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system. All preference settings changed by TinkerTool can be reset to Apple’s defaults, or to the state that existed before using the tool. No dangerous background processes are used for TinkerTool’s operation.

9WR - TinkerTool: Utility to open hidden features, settings in Mac OS X.

Latest of the many (and frequent; seemingly weekly) updates to Hamrick’s popular scanner tool which works on just under a gazillion scanners, give or take a few. A must-have if you scan.

VueScan is a powerful, easy to use program that works with 750 flatbed and film scanners, on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

9WR - VueScan: Scanner software with many features, works on nearly everything.

One of our favorite non-Apple Widgets. Tracks delivery status of packages from Apple, Amazon, DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS, and many others. A must have.

Don’t waste your time checking the site constantly, just open this all-in-one delivery tracker and enter your order number or tracking number. The status will update automatically for you, and even count down the days!

9WR - Delivery Status: Free Dashboard Widget to track package delivery status automatically.

Ken Humbard’s delightfully useful recipe organizer which features an online library of recipes from users, a full screen view, and a wine and spirits manager. Kate’s detailed review.

An easy to use recipe management app focused on four aspects of recipes. Organizing, Sharing, Cooking & Shopping.

9WR - YummySoup: Recipe organizer with online recipe library, wine, spirits manager.

Ultra capable keyboard shortcut creator performs multiple tasks with simple keystrokes. Now includes a recorder, integration with KeyCue, and contains a clipboard history switcher.

Design a custom action sequence with your own shortcuts and activate them at any time, you can navigate through running applications and open windows with Program Switcher, and you can work with an unlimited number of clipboards - all by pressing simple keystrokes.

9WR - Keyboard Maestro: Great utility creates keyboard shortcuts, built-in recorder, clipboard history.

Excellent tool for obsessive compulsive cleaning of Mac OS X caches and other files. Works on Mac utilities and applications, too, from Adium to iChat, Firefox to QuickTime and a few torrent utilities, too. Cover your tracks.

In only seconds, it can perform over fifty tasks which would take nearly an hour to perform manually. Safely erasing caches, logs, cookies, histories, and more… MacCleanse won’t miss a thing and could reclaim hundreds of megabytes of storage space.

9WR - MacCleanse: Windex for Mac caches, logs, cookies, files which clutter.

Not just another alarm clock. More of an alarm clock system that does a little of everything whenever you want. Sends text messages and email, plays iTunes music, and does about 127 other things.

Speak or display favorite inspirational quotes randomly throughout the day, or even send them as text messages to your cell phone! Have important reminders, or even birthday cards, e-mailed to contacts. Record laps with the Stopwatch. Track time differences for your investment portfolio. Even use it to help cook dinner by using the timer!

9WR - Alarm Clock Pro: Alarm clock, scheduler, timer alerts, sends messages, plays music.

Our favorite Mac screen-capture-to-movie utility now with more power. iShowU HD Pro makes capturing your Mac onscreen actions a breeze. Save your captures as QuickTime movies using one of many presets.

iShowU allows you to capture and record anything you can see on your screen, along with audio from any compatible source.

9WR - iShowU: Screen recorder, many preset options, easy setup, instant recording.

Update to handy big brother utility that logs all text typed for all Mac applications. Good for security, back up, and spying on those using your Mac.

The log includes the application name, window name, date & time, and how long the window was the front window.

9WR - BackTrack: Searchable log for everything you type on your Mac.

Poor man’s Fireworks in a friendly package. Cocoa vector-based graphic application loaded with tools, shapes, layers, text along path, filters, effects, scanner integration, and media browser.

VectorDesigner is a vector drawing application designed to be simple, intuitive and powerful to use. It has everything you need to create fancy vector graphics such as posters, brochures, stickers, logos, web graphics, t-shirt and more.

9WR - VectorDesigner: Vector graphics with non-destructive tools, filters, effects, layers, browser.

Update to very popular web site creation applications loaded with tools. Creates XHTML and CSS using a page layout system.

With Freeway, you can quickly and effortlessly lay out your website, embed images and content, then publish your work as clean, standards-compliant HTML, and upload to your server, to .Mac, or to a folder. Freeway’s smart about publishing—it’ll only upload only your changes, saving you lots of time.

9WR - Freeway Pro & Freeway Express: Web page creator uses page layout tools, XHTML, CSS compliant.

Slide show maker for Flash junkies. Takes digital images and produces video and audio slide shows in Flash SWF format, standalone or web presentations.

In just a couple of minutes you can convert a folder full of photos into a stunning slide show with sophisticated transitions and effects.

9WR - SWF ‘n Slide Pro: Makes audio video slide shows in Flash from photos.

Because you can never have enough speed, there’s Speed Download. Great interface to Mac utility which is four utilities in one. Download manager, FTP client, file sharing utility with encryption, and a .Mac/iDisk/WebDAV connectivity utility.

Faster and more secure, more features, easier to use and sporting a new look, this latest Speed Download release sets a new standard for download manager innovation, and is designed to be your central, unified hub for almost all the downloading and file transfer activities you do online.

9WR - Speed Download: Ultimate download utility combines FTP, auto-resuming, encryption, .Mac/iDisk/WebDAV capability.

Calendar and Address Book for Mac users with not enough utilities in the Menu bar. Close your eyes when visiting the BdCalendar web site. As to BdCalendar, this says it all:

BdCalendar fills the gap between Apple’s Clock not having a Calendar and instant full access to Apple’s Address Book and iCal. With just one click on your menubar, you can be viewing a Calendar, looking up addresses, checking your iCal events and To-do items without having five more items eating up your dock space or menu bar.

9WR - BdCalendar: One click Menu bar access to iCal and Address Book.

Sente (sen-tay) is an academic reference manager for searching, organizing, PDF management, and bibliographies. It’s the front end to hundreds of academic data sources from PubMed, Ovid, and more.

Sente helps you find, organize, review and cite the academic literature in your field, and it does it in ways that you have probably not thought possible before. Sente also helps you build and maintain your library of PDF files for these references… properly formatting bibliographies in your papers.

9WR - Sente: Like iTunes for finding, reviewing, and organizing academic literature.

Free and simple financial software for Mac, Windows, Linux, which uses Java. It’s not pretty, but works very well as a basic utility for budgets, expenses, reports.

Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background. In making this software, I have attempted to make things as simple as possible, while still retaining enough functions to satisfy most home users.

9WR - Buddi: Simple, free personal finance utility for budgets, expenses, reports.

Think of AIR as a container to create and run mini applications in their own private windows, combining Flash, HTML, Javascript, and other so-called Web 2.0 tools. Like Java but without the power. Bascially, Adobe is creating their own private little space on your desktop.

Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that allows web application developers to use their existing web development skills (HTML, Javascript, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications on the desktop.

9WR - Adobe AIR: Multimedia capable, cross-platform desktop environment to develop mini-applications.