I recently discovered Drip, a new small menubar filesharing app developed by Scott Savarie (@ScottSavarie) and Florian Denis (@Olotiar), released last month. After I got to take a look at it, I think I maybe know where the drop-down menu redesign in the latest Dropbox beta introduced yesterday got partly inspired by. Drip is a small, really useful tool for sharing large files quick and completely without hassle.

Drip uses the servers of hosting service sendspace to store files. Sendspace offers a completely free data plan (called sendspace Lite) with which users can upload files sized up to 300 MB which are available for download for 30 days starting from the time of the newest download; after this period of time they get deleted. The free plan is ad-powered, so you need to click through some ads if you download a file from the sendspace website. But this is the only disadvantage: as far as I know from the sendspace FAQs, there ist no upload limit in total for free users. Perfect for quick, temporary file sharing of smaller, but also suited for quite large files. If you want to upload even larger files and store them for a longer time on sendspace, you can sign up for a Pro or Premium account which support larger file sizes and higher download bandwidth (see detailed plan information here).

Drip is your desktop companion for Mac if you use sendspace. Download it for free from the app website, install and launch, and you can immediately start uploading files. There is no signup needed, new users automatically are connected to a free sendspace account without having to login. If you want to be more flexible with using the free account (maybe you want to use the web upload interface) or if you are a Pro/Premium user, you can enter your login data for sendspace in app’s preferences (I’ll come to them in detail in a bit).

Uploading files works just like you would expect it: drag the file you want to upload for sharing onto the menubar icon, drop it, and it gets uploaded. If the upload is finished, the related sendspace.com download link is automatically copied to you clipboard for sharing.

If you drop a file onto Drip’s menubar icon or if you click on it, a really great-looking drop-down menu appears listing the last uploaded files. You can change its height to view more elements without scrolling using a small draggable element at the very bottom of the list — I state this feature, since the dragging indicator is designed a bit too small in my opinion and is hard to aim at. You can click on any file in the list to copy its download URL again. Using the preference icon which always appear when you hover over a file list element you can do even more actions. The drop-down menu which appears when you click on it (my personal UI highlight of Drip) offers you to delete the upload, remove the file from the list to keep Drip uncluttered, automatically share the file download link with your default email client, or re-upload the file if you need a new link for any reason.

As you can see, Drip is very versatile, but still drop-dead simple to use. It also features extensive settings to make it work just like you want it to. You can bring them up by clicking the settings button in the top right corner of the main drop-down menu. Apart from the aforementioned sendspace account login panel, you can also activate Growl notifications (see example below), set up upload completion sound, clear the whole file list, or let the operating system start Drip at launch. However, the best option available in the settings are the shortcuts. Besides the standard one to bring up the app window, you can also set a custom shortcut for uploading the last screenshot you took, a truly great feature for quick thought sharing or reporting bug fixes.

After I researched a bit about the current free data plans of sendspace, I decided to make Drip my default app for quick, temporary file sharing. I had accounts for Droplr and Cloudapp in the past, as well as a free Dropbox account. But non of those services supports large file uploads (or they didn’t work like with Cloudapp), or in case of Dropbox I had to intricately delete unused files to free space for new ones. With Drip, all this hassle is gone (at least for now). It’s not just a new app supporting another web hosting service in the game, version 1 is already a serious competitor for apps like Droplr and iCloud. I can’t wait to see if they manage to develop a fitting iOS client of it as well to have all the uploaded files and links available on the road. Currently, Drip is Mac-only. But if the app gets as popular as I think it will, this will surely change soon.

You can download Drip for free on the app’s website. 

Way back in 2009 I first reviewed Dropzone, a dock-based utility by Aptonic that, through a grid interface allowed users to quickly perform common but tedious actions like uploading images or sharing text with a single drag & drop. Later, I took another look at Dropzone as a way to effortlessly download Mac apps as .DMG files, and have the app automatically extract the contents of a disk image and install an application for me.

With the 1.0 release on the Mac App Store today, Aptonic had to make a few changes to Dropzone in order to be approved by Apple and sell its app on the Mac’s native digital storefront: Dropzone is now a menubar app — which you can still decide to launch on login — and gone is the dock access that was also made popular by Dropzone’s own icon and Stacks-like appearance. However, in spite of the technical changes, Dropzone 1.0 still shares the same user interface and set of actions of the previous version: for those not familiar with the concept of the app, Dropzone offers a series of built-in actions (and others that you can manually download and install) to perform tasks automatically and save precious seconds and clicks when working with your Mac. So, for instance, you can drop pictures onto Dropzone’s window and have them uploaded to Flickr, or compressed in a .zip archive and emailed to someone. You can drop files and move them to a specific destination on your Mac, or configure FTP servers and directories if you find yourself constantly uploading files via FTP every day. Dropzone aims at letting you save time with boring tasks and, at the same time, quickly share items with your friends or coworkers without going through separate clients and web upload tools.

Dropzone is very lightweight, and it’ll ultimately make your life easier through drag & drop. Version 1.0 is available at $13.99 on the Mac App Store.

I use Google Translate quite a bit. Automatic, “machine-made” translations of entire sentences are usually bad and may lead to some funny nonsense, but the service has gotten better over the years and, admittedly, it’s useful to quickly look up synonyms from one language to another, or get the general sense of a blog post about technology and Apple (which I do on a daily basis for articles from Macotakara or MacMagazine). And whilst heading over Google Translate via the browser is pretty effortless these days thanks to application launchers like Alfred and LaunchBar, I’ve been looking for a way to embed the translate UI of Google’s website on my Mac in a way that’s always there but unobtrusive, ready to be used when I need it.

Translate Tab does this at $2.99. It takes Google Translate, and puts it inside a nicely translucent, white Lion-like popover in your Mac menubar, which you can access with a keyboard shortcut (and if you’re geek enough, customize with automatic clipboard entry through Keyboard Maestro). Tab Translate can be considered a site-specific browser, and I like how it’s been slightly tweaked to fit inside the popover with no horizontal scrollbars, retaining Translate’s functionalities such as alternate translations.

If you use Google Translate a lot and you’re tired of opening a new browser tab every time, you might as well spend $2.99 on Translate Tab on the Mac App Store.

AgileBits’ 1Password, a fantastic tool to securely store, manage and organize passwords, online accounts, notes and credit cards which we’ve covered several times here on MacStories, is now available on the Mac App Store. The long-awaited release (1Password is one of the most popular third-party Mac apps, and it’s no surprise customers wanted a way to get it from the most popular OS X software marketplace) comes with a 50% sale price (1Password is currently $19.99) and a series of new features implemented in this new 3.9 Mac App Store version.

To get the app on the Mac App Store, AgileBits had to fine tune some aspects of their application, and at the same time update other areas to properly take advantage of the new features introduced in OS X Lion. This means 1Password has full 64-bit support, is Lion-only, and can run in full-screen mode. 1Password has always been that kind of app I want to keep open without looking at it all the time, so full-screen mode in Lion provides the perfect compromise to keep 1Password a swipe away, running in the background in its own space.

Version 3.9, however, doesn’t stop at simple Lion integration: AgileBits went ahead, and implemented application sandboxing before Apple will start requiring for all Mac App Store apps this November. Sandboxing limits what parts of your computer the app can access, and it’s a change Apple is enforcing to make apps more secure, and users feel safer when downloading third-party software. So with the new 1Password, you can either keep the app’s .agilekeychain file (the database with all your passwords and data) in Dropbox as usual, or within the app’s sandbox. If you choose Dropbox sync — which will enable you to sync the app across computers and iOS devices — you have to make sure Dropbox is located in your OS X account’s home folder (it should be if you follow Dropbox default settings). Because of this new architecture, when you’ll delete the app via Lion’s Launchpad its data file backups will be deleted, too, and only one 1Password data file (again, the database) is allowed. Last, the developers have enhanced the app’s security with PBKDF2 Calibration — they have a blog post here so you can read more about it. That’s it for the technical changes. 1Password works better with Lion, it’s more secure thanks to Apple’s new APIs for 10.7, and it already complies to rules that the company will start enforcing in two months.

When it comes to new user features, 1Password 3.9 has a series of welcome additions that should simplify a user’s workflow and make the app more intuitive for Mac App Store newcomers. Whilst 1Password correctly recognized the old .agilekeychain data file I had in my Dropbox, those who haven’t used 1Password before will find a new first-run screen to help them find their way around browser extensions (more here), strong passwords, and automatic save and fill. 1Password’s preferences have been redesigned and simplified, as you can see from the screenshots; several menu items have been removed for simplification as well.

The biggest new feature in this Mac App Store release, from a user’s standpoint, is the new 1Password icon in the Mac’s menubar, which will help you with Folder / Tag Go & Fill access, AutoSubmit, and easily locking/opening 1Password directly from the menubar. The Go & Fill option is especially useful if you don’t want to manually type a URL in your browser, and prefer to let 1Password “take you” to a website, and have it automatically fill the login for you. The new menubar helper works great with the latest Safari on OS X Lion.

I’ve said this many times — 1Password is a must-have application for any Mac user who’s serious about keeping his personal data safe, protected, and always in sync across platforms. The newest update to the app is only $20 on the Mac App Store right now, and customers who purchased 1Password from AgileBits’ website within the previous 30 days can request a full refund if they’d rather buy it through the Mac App Store. Looking forward to a major 4.0 update, 1Password 3.9 is now on the Mac App Store and finely tuned for Lion.

With OS X Lion, Apple introduced system-wide support for Emoji characters, implemented on iOS 4′s Japanese keyboard last year and recently extended to all international keyboards in iOS 5 beta. Emoji characters are a cute, fun way to share more detailed emoticons with friends on social networks and messaging apps, and because they’re based on Unicode, they can be used in a variety of other ways, including domain names.

On Lion, users can display Emoji characters and easily insert them using the OS’ default character picker; EmojiBar, a $0.99 app available on the Mac App Store, makes emoji-picking even easier by putting those characters right into the menubar, accessible from a popover. EmojiBar is very simple, and nicely designed: a click on its icon opens the popover, another click on the emoji you need will copy it to the clipboard, and display a notification (notifications can be disabled in the Settings). Icons on the left let you switch between different kinds of emoji characters, whilst the Recents tab gives you access to your most used emojis (presumably your favorite ones as well).

I like the app’s simple approach and design. I know OS X can accomplish the basic functionality by itself, but it’s always nice to see an app doing one thing, and one thing well. You can download EmojiBar here.