GemFest 2009 begins

Increasingly, the airwaves around us are a jungle of competing wireless signals. Koingo Software’s AirRadar not only helps cut through the clutter, but also provides useful information about your wireless signal of choice.

Application Wizard--which operates as an OS X System Preferences pane--displays four colored buttons on a small panel you can drag to any position along any screen edge; you can even set the panel to slide out when needed, much like the Dock’s auto-hide mode.

If you need to track licenses and registration information for a large number of applications, AppShelf is a great way to do so.

If you who miss the OS 8/9-style application menu, two programs, ASM and multiXFinder, aim to fill the void.

If you’d prefer a simpler way to work with disk images, Click Archive is one such solution.

This program aim taps into iPhoto's Faces feature so you can attach images to Address Book entries.

GlimmerBlocker is an ad blocker that is safe to install because it doesn’t hack Safari.

If you find yourself inundated with a huge assortment of documents that are difficult to track, a document organizer application like EagleFiler can help you sort the mess.

FileBrowse is a beautiful, well-made media browser program, though how useful you find it will likely depend on what files you’re perusing.

Zipeg is a free utility that’s useful to keep around as a complement to OS X’s built-in archiving features.

If you juggle work all day and find yourself switching from one set of apps to another, you can appreciate Relaunch.

Wx is a meteorological program that is for anyone who’s serious about the weather.

If you regularly receive winmail.dat files from business associates, Letter Opener is well worth the investment.

Riverfold Software's Clipstart is to video clips what iTunes is to music, or iPhoto is to digital pictures. It's a handy one-stop shop for keeping track of all the video clips you film.

Do you find the standard OS X Address Book too limiting? If so, BdContacts might be just the solution for you.

Typically, while using your Mac’s iSight camera with one program, you can’t use it with another. But ManyCam frees iSight from this restriction.

If you occasionally want to access your home Mac from afar, whether it be to reach shared files, access a Web server, check in on a Web cam, or any other such purpose, Port Map is a free solution that can make the process simpler.

Have you ever wondered what a non-Apple software installer actually installs? Or what files a particular program is actually creating or modifying when it’s churning away? Fseventer is a clever tool that can help you solve these mysteries.

If you work extensively at cooking or event planning, or you’re just intensely organized and interested in exploring the subject, MacGourmet should be in your shopping cart.

Digital Sentry is an aptly named program that monitors your computer for any of a number of events.

This simple program aims to fix the problem of lost or forgotten warranties by providing you with an easy way to keep a record of purchases and warranty data.

Full-featured accounting programs like QuickBooks can seem overwhelming and complicated. For non-CPAs with simple accounting needs, the minimalist Mini$ is an easy way to keep track of finances on your Mac.

Monitor is a small and lightweight freeware application that seeks to put these regularly visited Web sites within easier reach.

Precipitate is a System Preference pane that lets Spotlight search your Google Docs, Google Bookmarks, and Picasa online photo albums.

Tweetube is a complementary app to the third-party service of the same name that allows you share a variety of media on Twitter.

Yum 3.0.7 is a solid, no-frills recipe manager, but its lack of some key features may have you looking for a more elegant program in the same price range.

If you want to use the same custom location several times in iMovie '09, you can use iMovieLocationEditor to edits iMovie’s locations.

If you tend to put all your events, appointments, and client meetings in iCal, TimeTable can help you figure out exactly how much time you’ve spent on each task

DeskCover is a free program that adds a customizable background behind the icons on your desktop.

Instead of logging in and out of different user accounts on your Mac, rooSwitch lets you switch users for only one app at a time by switching what rooSwitch calls Profiles.

Whether you’ve deleted photos, reformatted your media card, or had a card go bad, Klix recovers photos and movie files despite the vacuous state your media card appears to be in.

Photo Wrangler makes it easy to quickly scan through a folder of photos and sort them into separate folders.

Rife as Mac OS X already is with slide-show capabilities, PhotoPresenter builds onto those and puts many more options and styles at your fingertips.

For image editing, Sumo Paint offers many Photoshop standbys. And best of all, this Web-based application is free.

With ViewIt, you can simply drop your camera’s photos onto the ViewIt window, view and mark what’s good with just a key press, and copy only those images to your Mac.

You’ve probably heard about the Faces feature in iPhoto ‘09 that makes it quick and easy to find all photos of a particular someone in your iPhoto library. But if you don’t have iPhoto ‘09, iLovePhotos can give you a similar result for free.

As great as video sharing Web sites like YouTube are, they often don’t allow you to directly download the videos on their site. Web2 Delight doesn’t just make this possible; it makes the whole process positively painless.

Shape Collage turns a collection of photos into a collage of practically any shape, whether you’re going for a traditional design or something totally out there.

Aquafadas’s PulpMotion produces professional multimedia presentations that are anything but ordinary.

When you want to create iTunes playlists based on tempo or need to find the BPM of your songs, Tangerine makes the process incredibly fast and easy.

VideoDrive aims to make video conversions easy.

Cooliris is a super-handy browser plug-in that lets you scope out images and video content in a unique way, displaying everything in a full-screen, horizontally expanded, interactive 3-D “wall” view.

SousChef is a recipe organizer with an iTunes-RSS feed sensibility that can help you get your meal off to a good start.

If you have an even moderately large media library and like the idea of having everything neatly catalogued and readily available at the press of a button, or if you simply like watching high-definition movies, then you should try Plex.

As a grand finale to GemFest 2009, here’s a list of some of our all-time favorite Mac Gems.