DragonDisk saved me hours of painful effort. I had a bucket that JungleDisk left behind with 30,000 files in it. For some unknown reason, Amazon won't let users delete buckets if they have files in them, and Amazon's web interface doesn't provide a way to delete more than one file at a time. Googling around I found information on scripts and other hardcore techie ways to bulk delete files, but I didn't relish the thought of having to learn how to use these tools for what would hopefully be a one-time effort. I tried a couple of other S3 browsers, which choked on the huge number of files in my leftover bucket. Then I found DragonDisk, which wiped out all 30,00 files in about half an hour. I am happy happy!

I'm keeping DragonDisk on my Mac as it looks to be a great way to access files on Amazon S3. I didn't think it was appropriate to give DragonDisk a rating based on my limited use of it to date, but I would give it 5 stars just for being able to quickly delete thousands of files without choking or crashing.

I was using SymbolicLinker to create symlinks, but it was taking up room in my Services menu (which I try to keep under five items so it doesn't end up as a branched menu). SymLinker does the same job without adding to my Services menu, and the symlink ends up where I want it, so for my needs it's the best option. Thanks to the dev for this!

Version 2.0 is much improved, and Image XY now warrants a review and an excellent rating. The new "Advanced Resize" feature allows me to resize to a different format and to set the image quality. Too bad this feature is only available from the menu -- I would like an "Advanced Resize" button at the bottom of the Image XY window, next to the standard "Resize" button.

Image XY's big advantage over other similar apps is that it preserves the colour profile of the image, rather than assigning the monitor profile to the image as most other apps do. I rated Image XY 4.5 stars instead of 5 stars because the dev still won't allow users to edit the built-in presets, which for my needs are useless. Hint: You can edit or delete them by hacking around in the plist file.

Fantastic utility when it works, but it disappeared as soon as I restarted my Mac after updating to Safari 5.1. Now there's no icon, even though a Mail Unread Menu process is running. I wrote to the dev but have not received a response. Too bad, because I really liked this.

A caution about upgrading…

I installed version 3.0, launched HoudahSpot, got a dialog box telling me my licence is out of date, clicked the "Upgrade" button, a blank window flashed on the screen for a split-second and that was it. No HoudahSpot, no option to upgrade, and nothing in the developer's store on his website.

Fortunately I had a copy of version 2.7.4 so I was able to downgrade easily enough. Looks like I'll have to wait until there's a new version or the developer adds an upgrade option to his online store.

The idea sounds great in principle, but I couldn't get it to work. I launched the app, clicked the OK button at the prompt where it tells me it's running in demo mode, and then it froze. I had to force-quit. I tried it again with the same result, so I dragged it to the trash.

Turly (the developer) was unfortunately involved in a collision with a bus a couple of months ago, and as a result has warned FinderPop users not to expect a 10.6-compatible version for a while. See http://www.fnarr.net/fp/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17 for details. Here's hoping Turly recovers quickly and completely.

Like many others, I have become totally dependent on FinderPop, and will be at a complete loss when I upgrade to Snow Leopard next month. I would welcome any suggestions for apps that offer some of the functionality and ease of use of FinderPop, that I could make do with until FinderPop is upgraded for OS X 10.6.

The one thing that's been driving me nuts with EyeTV 3.0.1 is the constant prompts to authenticate as an administrator (I run EyeTV from a standard account, as I do with all apps).

I tried changing permissions on the com.elgato.* prefs files, and on a few other files I found in the Application Support folder, but with no luck. I contacted Elgato's tech support, and received the following answer:

Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems.

We are aware of a problem with non-admin accounts and EyeTV 3.0.1. There is a problem with saving a setting to our global preference when quitting out of EyeTV. Hopefully our Engineers will fix the problem soon.

Some of my customers have been able to click Cancel and bypass the admin password entry. Another changed permissions for ~/Library/Preferences so the non-admin accounts had Read/Write permissions.