While trying to help me debug a glitch on my particular DragThing installation, James Thompson pointed out a nifty little tool built into OS X but not enabled by default. The tool is called "Crash Reporter," and it's quite easy to enable.
Open a terminal session, navigate to /etc, and edit (in vi, emacs, or pico) hostconfig. Add a new line (at the end, if you wish) that reads
CRASHREPORTER=-YES-Save the changes and exit the editor. On your next reboot, the Crash Reporter will be active. To make it work immediately, type
sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CrashReporter/CrashReporterin the terminal window [Note: I haven't tried this myself, and a posted comment seems to indicate that it doesn't work; a reboot may well be required.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010420163054950