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Grooveshark
Streaming music playlist creator/generator
Developer: Escape Media Group
OS: Web-based
Price: Free
Site: http://listen.grooveshark.com/

Thanks to pocket-sized MP3 players that can hold an entire CD collection, the humble shuffle mode has ushered in a way of listening to music we haven't really experienced since the heyday of radio—only instead of an omnipotent DJ spinning tracks of their choosing, it's a computer chip spinning tracks you choose. Of course, the downside of shuffle mode is its pseudo-random algorithms are occasionally too random; sometimes you want to hang on to a specific mood or spend a little more time with a genre before jumping to the next novel sound.

Shuffle modes have been available on computer players for years, most notably with iTunes' party shuffle mode, and more intelligent shuffle algorithms have made the rounds thanks to the likes of Last.fm and US-only service Pandora. Grooveshark is a slightly different beast in that you can combine songs you choose with automated recommendations in the same playlist, striking a balance between the cold, calculating shuffle algorithms and the human touch of a DJ.

You start a queue in Grooveshark by searching for a favourite song or artist and adding a song. From there, you can add tracks manually by searching for them, or solicit suggestions from Grooveshark by clicking the Autoplay button. You can approve or reject the recommendations as you like, and continue to add or move tracks in Autoplay mode. Grooveshark is like a friend who can fill in the blanks when you're trying to make a mixtape but can't think of quite the right songs.

Easeus Partition Manager (tested v3.0 Home Edition)
Hard disk partition manager
Developer: Chengdu Yiwo Tech Development
OS: Windows
Price: Free for Home Edition, $32 USD for Professional (other corporate editions available)
Site: http://www.partition-tool.com/

It may not happen often, but occasionally you'll want to change the structure of your hard drive partitions. Perhaps you've just copied everything over to a newer, larger hard drive, and want to resize your media partition, or maybe you want to shrink a partition so you can install a second operating system. Because changing your partitions isn't a common task, you might find it silly to shell out a lot of cash for a partition manager, but when you need one, you'll find very quickly that Windows' own tools aren't up to the task.

Easeus Partition Manager comes in several varieties, but the one most interesting to home users is the free edition, which allows you to perform most basic partitioning tasks like moving, resizing, adding and deleting partitions. Unlike other free tools like the commonly used GParted, you don't need to burn Partition Manager to a CD and boot your computer off it in order to modify your partitions; you can queue all your changes while still in Windows, and reboot only when you're ready to commit.

Easeus Partition Manager is a very easy program to use, but there are some tradeoffs. For example, it doesn't recognize Linux partitions, and can't resize or move them. And though GParted is more intimidating in some ways, it is also more powerful. But if all you need is a utility to edit your Windows partitions, Easeus Partition Manager is definitely worth keeping around.

Blue Mirror CD/DVD Indexer (tested v1.2.0.0; also known previously as Octopus)
CD/DVD file indexer
Developer: kowaliszyn
OS: Windows
Price: Free
Site: http://www.codeplex.com/octopi

Think about the size of hard drive you could have bought five years ago for $100, and then think about what you'd get today for the same price. So you'd think the days of burning things to CDs and DVDs would be long past, right? But big hard drives aren't necessarily on everyone's shopping lists, and even if you do bring home some big iron, you've still got years of old optical discs to deal with. Either way, chances are you've got a lot of shiny plastic discs, and unless you've been keeping meticulous notes all this time, you probably don't have much of an idea of what they hold.

Enter Blue Mirror, a different sort of disk indexer and search utility. Unlike other desktop search programs, which are designed to scan and index your hard drives, Blue Mirror keeps track of what's on your CDs and DVDs. Drop a disc in your drive and tell Blue Mirror to scan it; a few seconds later, a listing of the disc's file contents are saved to a local database for future reference, whether or not the disc is in your DVD drive. The indexer also allows you to search the database for specific files, and helpfully points you to the CD or DVD containing the file you're looking for.

Though the program is still relatively new and untested, and relies on some old design conventions (like forcing the use of filename wildcards in searches), Blue Mirror will be a godsend for anyone drowning in spindles of plastic discs.