The OS X menubar is a strange beast. It never goes away, changes with every application, and most users couldn’t care less what is on or off it. However, there comes a time in every geek's life when the menubar is simply too...simple. Lucky for you, we have a list of the 10 best completely free applications that run solely from the menubar. Of course, if you are an organization freak, look elsewhere, because the multiple new icons WILL clutter up the otherwise pristine menubar, but we guarantee they will exponentially increase the usefulness of your Mac. To reduce the clutter, you can hold the command key while clicking on a menubar app, and drag it off. For example, unless you have a wicked Bluetooth-based secret lair, there is no particular reason why you have to keep Bluetooth in the menubar 24/7.

Dropbox

It seems as if every service is going to the cloud, with cloud backup, cloud operating systems, and most popular, cloud storage. There are a number of options in the cloud storage game, like SugarSync, Windows Live Sync, Windows Live Mesh, and Syncplicity, but Dropbox is the most feature rich, and is incredibly simple to maintain. When you install it, it creates a folder on your hard drive (you can also choose an existing folder) and will keep that folder in sync with all the Dropboxes on your different computers. Of course, you will need to install the Dropbox application on each computer you want to sync to, but with builds available for OS X, Windows, and Linux, it is an easy affair. If you are running Amiga OS, we can’t help you. Dropbox also has some additional features worth mentioning. You can share public links (albeit with slightly slow download speeds of about 75-100 kb/s) to any of your files, create a photo gallery viewable on www.getdropbox.com, and package and download your files easily from the Web interface.

Quick tip: If you want to sync files or folders to Dropbox without having to put them in the Dropbox folder, contrary to popular belief, you can. You need to use Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type in the following command:

ln -s {Path to file or folder you want to sync} {Path to Dropbox directory}
For example, if we had a folder called ToBeSynced in my Documents folder, the command would be:

ln -s /Users/Arvind/Documents/ToBeSynced /Users/Arvind/Dropbox

VERY IMPORTANT - Keep a space between the two paths

You can download Dropbox here.

Visor

Nothing says “geek cred” like firing up the Terminal and controlling your friend’s computer with SSH. Nothing says “über-geek cred” like having the Terminal drop down, and then controlling your friend’s computer with SSH. Visor is essential for anyone that uses the Terminal frequently, as it allows you to assign a hotkey to bring it onto the screen.  It will save your Terminal window without keeping the window open or having to keep it in the Dock. Visor requires the SIMBL plug-in, and full installation instructions can be found here.

iStat Menus

Some call us the RAM Nazi, and for good reason. We obsess over memory usage. Thus, we find ourselves in a conundrum, because if we keep Activity Monitor open to track application memory usage, we waste RAM by having it open. Also, we don’t like to admit to being neurotic. iStat Menus keeps track of not only RAM usage, but also CPU usage, hard drive temperature, hard drive space used, network usage, read/write speed, and a plethora of other esoteric information. There is probably a module that lets you monitor the Mars Rover (no promises). All of this information can be accessed through the menubar, and you can pick and choose exactly what to monitor. We liked the calendar and clock in iStat so much that we replaced the default OS X clock with it.

iStat menus can be downloaded here.