• Developer / Product Page: Helium Foot Software / MercuryMover 2.0
• Price: $20 (free upgrade from 1.x; 30 day trial available)

Earlier this year, I selected MercuryMover 1.1 as a Pick of the Week. This week, it's being selected again, because I've found version 2.0 to be a very nice upgrade over the original. There are two main features of 2.0 that I really like: you can define single keystrokes to set window size (width and height) and/or location (left and top of window), and there's a nice little info window that shows the current window's size and location. While the info window is nice, it's the shortcuts that I find really useful.

For instance, after activating MercuryMover (Control-Command-Up Arrow), you can then press 8 to set the current window to 800x600, or 1 to create a 1024x768 window -- those are both pre-defined in the MercuryMover interface. But you can create your own shortcuts too -- "t" to move a window to the top left of the screen, or maybe "W" to create a 1200-pixel wide window, keeping that window's current height. I have a number of predefined sizes for use with the Finder, web browsers, and text editors.

The MercuryMover interface has been redone with version 2.0, and it's now clearer and easier to use than it was before. Dan Frakes covered MercuryMover 2.0 in this recent Macworld Gems entry, if you'd like to read even more about it. As a keyboard fanatic, it's one of my favorite utilities, as it helps keep my mouse at rest.

If you add alarms and reminders to your iCal events and are tired of putting in one day ("day before") or two days as the time period, iCal offers a feature to resolve this with a little math. Go into iCal's preference pane and look towards the bottom. Check the box that says "Add a default alarm to all new events and invitations." In the box below that, enter the minutes (15 by default).

To get an alarm the day before -- or two or three, etc. days before -- is to simply multiple 60*24 for a day, 60*48 for two days and so on. iCal will recognize that this is a day and by default make the reminder set to the day before.

By default, double-clicking a folder in the Mac OS X Finder opens the folder in the current window. You probably know that you can open a new window for a folder that appears in the current window by holding down the Command key before double-clicking. You might also know you can open the parent of the current folder in a new window with Command-Up Arrow -- but this will close the original folder, too.

To open the parent folder of the current window in a new window, while leaving the current window open, hold Command and Control, and then press the Up Arrow key on the keyboard.