OneUp Industries, a company launched by the author of such notable Stardock applications as Fences and ObjectDock, has released a public beta of its first software offering.

Bins 0.95 is a Windows 7-only application that allows the user to group Taskbar icons into convenient folders, or “bins” (hence the title). It’s based on a similar feature that’s found in Mac OS X, which supports “stacking” of dock icons in a similar way.

Once installed, Bins sits unobtrusively in the background – the user simply drags one icon onto a related icon and places it in the pop-up balloon that appears above the primary icon to group them together. Additional related programs can be grouped in the same way. Icons can be rearranged by dragging and dropping: the left-most icon becomes the primary icon and – until the next beta release – only the primary icon supports jumplists.

Another potential bugbear is the fact that while binned programs take up less space than they did originally, accessing them requires extra work in that you have to roll the mouse over a bin and wait for its contents to appear before clicking on the program icon. If you regularly find yourself switching between two open programs, this could be a potential deal-breaker.

While Bins is free to use while it remains in beta, the current beta will expire on June 1^st. The final release will cost $25 (although you can pre-order for the discounted price of $19.95), which has already attracted some criticism considering the program has quite limited functionality.

Bins 0.95 is available now as a free public beta download for Windows 7 PCs. The beta will expire on June 1st. When the program is finally released, it will cost $25, although it can be pre-ordered at a discounted price of $19.95.