If you're like me, you rate much of the music in your iTunes library, using those ratings to create Smart Playlists. For example, I've got a playlist for tracks rated 5 (my all-time favorites) and another for tracks rated 2 or 1 (songs I don't like much and I eventually want to disable or delete, respectively). I also have a Smart Playlist containing tracks with no rating; whenever I'm in a rating mood, I listen to that playlist and rate each song as it plays.

But it's inconvenient to have to switch to iTunes just to assign a rating. Synergy and CoverSutra let you assign keyboard shortcuts for rating tracks, but some people are fans of the point-and-click approach (or just don't need something as full-featured as these utilities). A couple older Gems that proved popular with readers were Rating Bar, reviewed in 2004, and iTunesRating, reviewed in 2005. Each added a system-wide menu for rating the current iTunes track. Unfortunately, neither is compatible with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

Over on MacUser, Dan Moren recently pointed out a new solution, Fousa's free Funes, currently at version 0.2. When listening to a track in iTunes, a click on Funes' menu-bar icon displays the name of the track and its current rating (or lack thereof); you just click on the appropriate star to assign the desired rating.

Sure, you can right-click on the iTunes icon in the Dock, then mouse up to the Rating submenu, and then choose a rating. But I find Funes' menu-bar approach to be more accessible.

On the other hand, Funes is still a work in progress. For example, if you accidentally rate the wrong track--say you click on a rating just as the track is changing--and want unrate it, there's no obvious way to do so. (The not-so-obvious solution is to double-click on the first star.) And unlike standard Mac OS X menu behavior, Funes' rating bar doesn't flash momentarily when you click on a rating, so you get no visual feedback of the action. Whenever I clicked on a rating, I wondered if I instead clicked in an open area of the menu, or missed the menu completely, causing the menu to close without performing any action at all.

Finally, I wish Funes provided the option to display--and let you choose--the actual rating right in the menu bar, as Rating Bar and iTunesRating did (see the image to the right). Although such an approach uses more menu-bar space, it makes it easy to see, at a glance, the current track's rating.

Still, I'm glad to see a developer filling the void left by Rating Bar and iTunesRating; I'm looking forward to seeing Funes mature.

Funes is currently compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 or later.