Tagamac

As a telecommuter I don’t have a lot of interaction with real people over the course of a standard day, and I’ve gradually been trying to find new ways to get a bit more human interaction through that wonderful impersonal medium, the internet. A college friend invited me to Twitter, so I’m giving it a shot to see if it can help connect me to the broader world a bit more.

Only problem is that I don’t really know anyone who uses Twitter. I’ve started the account following some people I find interesting out in Mac Software/Design Land, but I’d love to find some like-minded web designers or folks involved in the Mac software scene (any taggers out there?). You can find me at twitter.com/onecrayon/; help me find some web developers and just generally cool people before I start twitching and talking to myself! (Well, okay, I’ve been talking to myself for years; but the twitching is a definite danger.)

This has nothing to do with tagging. However, for anyone out there who does web design and needs a text editor, skEdit version 4 has finally been released. skEdit is one of the best text editors available for Mac (along with TextMate), particularly for internet text editing. Its inline code completion and project-based editing (of local and remote files simultaneously, keeping them in sync) make it a very compelling text editor, particularly given its lower price point.

Although TextMate is a more powerful editor in some ways, skEdit’s learning curve is far shallower, and if you are editing HTML, PHP, CSS, and so forth then skEdit is an excellent choice. Definitely worth taking a look now that version 4 has finally gone live.

WebnoteHappy, probably the best of the Mac bookmark managers, and Booxter, an intriguing alternative to Delicious Library (with admittedly mediocre tag support), are offered as MacSanta featured items today December 8, 2007 only for 20% off with the coupon “MACSANTA07″. If you miss out, though, you’ll still be able to get them for 10% for the rest of December.

I definitely recommend trying out WebnoteHappy if you haven’t already. Although it has some limitations (like only supporting del.icio.us and not my favored Ma.gnolia), it’s still a very nicely designed piece of software with solid tagging support.

EagleFiler (and a bunch of other cool, non-tagging apps like SpamSieve and more) is available from MacSanta today December 2, 2007 only for 20% off. Although it will only be a featured deal today, if you miss it you’ll be able to pick it up for 10% off through the end of the MacSanta promotion (December 24th).

The MacSanta sale is definitely a good one to keep your eye on (because you don’t have enough places to spend money in December as is), and they provide an RSS feed for those who like to keep abreast of the latest featured deals.

This is completely off-topic, but I like a good read even more than I like a well-implemented file library (I know, it’s pretty crazy). Bill Cameron, a fellow Avenir user, is giving away five copies of his suspense novel, Lost Dog, in the Give a Dog a Home sweepstakes. Lost Dog is a great read; I’m not a big fan of suspense thrillers or crime/mystery novels (I picked it up because I knew Bill from the Avenir forums), but it was a single-sitting read for me and kept me up way past when I should have gone to bed. Definitely a worthwhile way to spend an evening. Or two, if you’re less obsessed than I.

So take a break from tagging those pesky files, head over to Bill’s website, suggest a name for his lost dog, and win yourself a great novel. Or lose and buy it anyway. Whatever works for you. And with that minor endorsement out of the way, I’ll see if I can’t write something pithy about tagging next.

Many Tricks has released yFlicks 3.0, a movie manager that helps you collect, manage, and watch anything from movies around your Mac to movies off YouTube. yFlicks 2 was alright, but 3 adds “tagging” (which is actually just standard key-value metadata, so it’s not actually tagging), smart groups, automatic metadata assignment via Amazon for full-length movies (including downloading cover images), batch renaming, and many other performance improvements a neat little features. Although the tagging is not what I’d hoped, this is still definitely a worthy piece of software to look into if you would like to enjoy YouTube videos and so forth later without having to engage in fruitless YouTube searches.

Additionally, yFlicks 3 is available today, November 20th, 2007 only for 40% off ($14.95) from MacUpdate Promo. I highly recommend giving yFlicks a spin and considering getting it at the sale price; I’ve enjoyed yFlicks 2, and expect yFlicks 3 to be even more useful. yFlicks 3 is a free upgrade for previously registered users.

This actually has nothing to do with tagging, but since people who like tags and people who like task management often tend to congregate these days, I figured I’d post it. Omni has released a public beta for OmniFocus and is offering it for half the eventual sale price through their online store as a special pre-release sale (introductory price $39.95, regular price will be $79.95; OmniOutliner Pro owners get an additional 25% off).

I can only imagine the conversation at Omni: “Damn it, this project has been sapping our resources with no return for far too long.” “Hey, how about a Christmas bonus? I wanna buy a pony.” “Oh fine, we’ll sell a promise for less than the real thing and you can have your freaking pony.” In any case, while I’m currently hoping that Things will provide my GTD fix, OmniFocus is clearly going to be a standard-setting GTD application and is well worth checking out.

Although this has nothing to do with tagging, Hawk Wings, a blog dedicated to Mail.app and all things email, has returned after a long absence with a steady stream of articles and links to handy Leopard-friendly Mail.app plugins. I strongly recommend Hawk Wings; it’s a great resource if you use email a lot (particularly if you’re into Apple’s Mail.app), and besides that it was a big inspiration behind my creation of Tagamac.

Although Hawk Wings is usually focused on Mail.app, it also often provides information about productivity software more generally, so even if you’re not a Mail.app fan, check it out!

If it wasn’t enough that it’s currently released at an intro price, TaskPaper is on sale November 1, 2007 only at the MacUpdate Promo. If you enjoy managing your to-dos without all the cruft that shows up in so many GTD-based software, TaskPaper may well be the perfect solution for you. I’ve been using it while I waited for iGTD to get updated, and I’m not sure if I’ll go back. TaskPaper is that cool.

For more information, and to download the demo, head over to the MacUpdate Promo page.

Due to technical difficulties with their web server, Big Robot Software (makers of TagBot) has been unavailable for several days. If you’ve had trouble reaching the Big Robot by email or the web, you should now be able to access their website. If you’ve had any trouble with licensing or otherwise reaching them, you should now be able to get help via their support email: support_bot obfuscate@bigrobotsoftware.com.