The Week in Mac Apps: Track time and stay focused

In this week’s roundup of new Mac apps, you’ll find a few ways to keep focused and save your precious time for more useful activities—like solving math problems or watching videos online.

If you take your privacy seriously, SweetP Productions’ $15 Cookie ( Mac App Store Link) can help you keep tabs over those pesky little data files that advertisers use to track your activity online.

The app automatically gives you a complete overview of all the cookies stored on your Mac—including those used by Flash and Silverlight—and lets you decide whether to keep or discard them.

If you’re the forgetful type,  Due ($10,  Mac App Store Link) can help you keep track of the the things you need to do.

The app turns natural-language expressions like “dinner at 8pm on Wednesday” into calendar entries, and will remind you automatically when things are, well, due.

Tired of fumbling with downloaded video files in weird formats? Eltima Software’s Elmedia Player: free video player ( Mac App Store Link) may be worth a look.

This versatile player can play a veritable alphabet soup of video format, from FLV to MKV and MOV, without requiring the installation of external codecs or plugins, is capable of streaming movies directly from a Web address, and even lets you edit the subtitles stored in your files.

GCC Productions’ $50 Fade In can help you turn your dream of Hollywood success into reality—or, at least, help you give your school’s production of “A Christmas Carol” a more polished look.

This professional screenwriting tool allows you to write plays in standard format, and makes easy work of tracking revisions as you move through the drafting process.

Head lost in the cloud? Let Avar Software’s $10 Focus Time – Activity & Task Tracker ( Mac App Store Link) bring you back to Earth by helping you keep track of where your time goes.

The app lets you create a log of every activity in your life—from working, to exercising, to dealing with house chores. Its simple interface helps you categorize everything, and can even produce charts that explain how you spend your most precious resource.

The MicroWave Team’s $23  MicroWave ( Mac App Store Link) is like a Swiss Army knife, except that, instead of using it to cut things, it lets you record and edit great-sounding audio.

The app can be used for anything from recording the latest episode of your podcast to digitizing your old vinyl records, and offers many options for adding effects to your end product and optimizing its quality.

Care for a little math? Daniel Alm’s $10 PocketCAS ( Mac App Store Link) makes short work of everything from equations to graphs with a simple and intuitive interface.

Ideal for everyone from the high school student to the professional engineer, the app supports linear algebra, calculus, and physics operations. PocketCAS also offers up full scripting capabilities, and can plot both two- and three-dimensional graphs.

Vector 15’s $20 Silent Sifter ( Mac App Store Link) cures your digital media overload by helping your organize all your photos and videos.

The app manages your files’ entire lifecycle: it can import data from various sources, organize media by date, and filter even very large amounts of pictures and videos with a few click of your mouse.

Sometimes, simple really is better—at least, that’s what Ten by Ten’s $2 Timer seems to suggest.

The app offers up a simple interface that can be controlled either with your mouse or with a few keystrokes. When your timer reaches zero, Timer plays a ringtone and flashes its display.