My menubar on my Mac is getting a little more crowded these days with the addition of two new tools that I'm trying out.

Dropbox

The first one isn't exactly a new one, but it's new for me. Being a true geek, I run off of multiple machines. I have 2 machines that I do all of my work on, a Mac Pro for in the office, and a Macbook Pro for home. Plus I have my Mac mini hooked up to my TV for movies and music (running Boxee, natch). I buy my music at work usually, but I archive it at home on the mini. I find sermons, audio, etc. that I want to listen to while running or driving at home, but I have my iPhone and iPods synched to my work machine. I find good media/ideas for camp at work usually, but I keep those in a folder on my Macbook Pro. So I have the need to transfer files around.

I use ChronoSync once a week to sync up and move files around. I keep my projects folder in sync at least once a week (or as often as needed). And I have been using several folders that move from one machine to another to move files around.

Enter Dropbox. Dropbox gives you a common directory that syncs with the cloud, which then syncs with any other machine you're using. Now when I find media I want to listen to, I save it to my Dropbox folder, and the Dropbox service uploads it immediately and copies it to all of my other machines.

So now when the latest episode of The IT Crowd comes out via bit torrent, I grab the torrent at work, and drop it into a folder on my Dropbox. I have Boxee on my Mac mini set to watch that folder and import any torrents dropped into it. Or if I find something I want to listen to, I just drop it into my Dropbox, and it will be there for me at work. It's way more convenient and reliable than connecting to the machine directly with afp.

The free Dropbox account allows you to stop up to 2GB in your Dropbox.

Tags

So I keep these folders full of movies, images, readings, etc. for use in worship planning at camp, etc. Maybe it's something funny that would be useful for lightening the mood at Senior High 1 at Camp Sumatanga. I find these things all year long. But how do I find them all when I need them without putting them in a folder just for that event? That's where tagging comes in.

Tags allows you to tag files and folders in the finder, bookmarks, emails, addressbook, photoshop, keynote, iphoto, MS Office, etc.

So now I find a video on YouTube that would be funny at camp, I bring up the shortcut to tag it, and I tag it "sh12009", "funny," and if I have a specific day of the week it would work, "wednesday."

Now it's searchable with those tags in Spotlight, or via the tags application.

It's also great for tagging emails related to a project. For instance, I'm working on multiple projects related to a special speaker that is coming on campus. I tag them all so that I can pull up all the info related to that project quickly. It's easy to manage the Indesign project files without tags, but not the emails or potential photos to use in iPhoto. Tagging them fixes all that. The cost is a little steep, but there's a 30 day trial, so you can see if it's for you.