Docktopus

Eric and Startly released a new app last week - Docktopus.

I tend to stay away from most utilities*, but I'm finding this one pretty useful. It gives you four quadrents per dock icon, where you can attach little monitor and utility badges. I use the CPU monitor on all my apps(which is really useful for seeing when an application is hung, or which one is chewing up all of my processor), as well as the Mail and iCal peek badges (for seeing unread emails and upcoming events). I've tried the others a bit, but these have been the most useful so far.

Since I only use one or two badges per app, it doesn't add much visual clutter to my dock. It does however allow you to create the bug-eyed-vampire-finder:



The other thing I'm finding is that I really seem to want to mistype the name - I keep going back to correct myself from typing Doctopus, Docktapus, and Doctapus. At least it's much easier to _say_.

*Back in my OS9 days I used to have tons of apps that I would install and use on every machine, but once I started doing OS X testing and having to install a new OS at least once a day, it gradually wore me down so that I use very few extra utilities. Quicksilver is the other notable exception to this...