Discovering a well-written piece of software that fits a need in your digital life is a very satisfying thing. When that software comes from a solo developer or small team, it’s even more enjoyable. The following are some of the most useful, well-designed, fun programs that have made it on to my dock in the past year, and they’re all the result of individuals and small groups of people dedicating their creativity and hard work to thoughtful software development. All prices in USD.

MarsEdit

Despite the recent overhaul of the WordPress interface, I still find their post editor somewhat clunky. As far as web apps have come, desktop apps are still superior in many ways when it comes to responsiveness, task focus, and interface affordances (think menus, panels, and native UI elements). To address this situation, MarsEdit takes the post writing and management features of your favourite blog software (including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Drupal) and puts them on your desktop, allowing you to focus on the most important part of your blog: writing. It has just the right feature set, and allows me to write, edit, and preview (and tag, categorize, and edit the metadata of) my posts offline – a crucial aspect when traveling or working away from wireless. I particularly like how it allows me to manage all of my blogs from one interface, rather than having to login to each in turn. Also, the Media Manager makes it effortless to upload, link, and embed images and other media, including those from my Flickr Feed, something that I do every time I write a travel post. Great job, Red Sweater Software! A steal at $29.95 (after a 30-day free trial).

Papers

Having recently become a member of the graduate level academic set, I’ve been learning that managing a research project by haphazardly stuffing attachments into hastily-named folders in Finder can lead to a needle-in-a-haystack situation in record time. Papers is an elegant solution to this problem, allowing you to manage the proliferation of article PDFs on your hard drive. Geared specifically toward research, the program combines database search with article management, reading, annotation, citation, and import/export features. Again, a desktop app trumps the online equivalents of each of these steps. For example, Papers allows you to add the proxy URL of your academic institution, so that when working away from campus you can seamlessly browse and download results from a variety of sources (Google Scholar, ACM, CiteSeer, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, etc) without being blocked by login pages every few clicks as when using a browser. Once downloaded, articles are scraped for bibliographic and other metadata, and organized by author, journal, and user-specified collections.

It is also possible to set Papers to automatically rename and sort the original PDFs into a Library in Finder, so that your files are as neatly organized as your annotations. Also, in addition to citation information, the metadata features allow you to rate your articles and track which you’ve read or printed – a simple but very useful feature. Another similarly well thought-out addition is a one-click Email button which formats a journal URL and citation and attaches the PDF to a new message in Mail. Makes sharing a relevant article with a colleague absolutely effortless. Finally, as a reading environment, Papers tops Preview by offering a magnification slider, improved full screen access, and intuitive icons for continuous/discrete paging and 1-up/facing pages. This has already become indispensable in my research workflow. $42 for a single-user license, after 30 day trial. And 40% off for students!

Xtorrent

Xtorrent is the only remaining BitTorrent client on my Mac. After trying the original, Vuze/Azureus, and others, I settled on Xtorrent for the perfect OS X look and feel, integrated search and download, freedom from ads and other media content that slow down the app (I’m looking at you, Vuze), and well thought-out sorting and selection interaction. From the (Canadian!) genius behind NewsFire, Acquisition, and Inquisitor. Xtorrent is $25 for Pro and free for a 10 kbps download cap after an hour into each session…anyone remember 1996? Worth the cash.

Rivet

When I crumbled to the pressures of consumer society and bought an XBox 360 last fall, I was disappointed (but not surprised) to find that Microsoft had delivered a fantastic user interface and software platform for the system…that won’t talk to my Mac. This meant that if I wanted to stream any media or use my wireless network on my XBox, I’d have to run XP or Vista on one of my machines. Not a very appealing prospect. Rivet addresses the media sharing part of the equation, allowing you to stream your music, photos, and videos directly to your TV through your XBox. The app runs as a discreet menu bar icon (next to your clock, battery, etc) that allows you to specify which folders to share with your console. Shared files fit in seamlessly with the XBox media interfaces, allowing you to play slideshows, listen to music with visualizations, and watch videos. Also, Rivet improves on competitor Connect360 by reproducing the file structure of your media directories in the XBox interface, rather than compiling everything into one flat and difficult to navigate list. Incredibly, streaming doesn’t hiccup at all, even when playing from a USB or firewire connected hard drive! Sure beats tossing everything onto my USB key every time I want to watch a show. $18.95.

MindNode

Though I haven’t spent a lot of time with it, MindNode‘s intuitive interface and simplicity have caught my attention. It’s a ‘mind-mapping’ application that allows you to quickly map out hierarchical or networked data in an attractive visual layout. I haven’t quite found the sweet spot where MindNode’s feature set makes the most sense to use, but I do find myself playing with it. For example, I’ve used it to quickly sketch out XML tags and attributes, and database tables and columns, but find that once I get to a reasonable level of stability in the information design I switch to a more powerful app for adding metadata and so on. Perhaps this is the point of the software – as a mental sketchpad – and it’s just taking some time to get accustomed to the paradigm. I wish that the formatting inspectors were integrated with the main app window as sidebars or drawers, instead of left floating as (Apple default) external panes, but besides that small criticism, this is an intriguingly simple and intuitive app that’s worth checking out. Free. * A Pro version is available for $14.95, but I can’t seem to find any information about what is different between the two versions. The free app doesn’t seem to be handicapped.

World of Goo

And last but not least, World of Goo is a physics simulation puzzle game that has to be played to be appreciated. The game is clever, fun, addictive, and constantly surprises with moments of spontaneity and subversion of expectations. I haven’t enjoyed a puzzle game this much since Lemmings on the Commodore 64. It’s getting in the way of my to-do list in ways that only the best games can! The game speaks for itself, but the story behind it makes it even sweeter. 2D Boy, an ‘indie game studio’ made up of two gents from San Francisco, has been turning heads by returning game development to its roots…namely fun and creativity. Amazingly, they built the game with all open source tools and just $10,000 in personal savings. I think EA must have spent $10,000 on dynamic puck reflection alone in NHL 09! $20 for full version, single chapter demo free.