Tagamac

Mariner Software in conjunction with Return Self Software have officially announced that Avenir 2.3, Tagamac’s choice for writing software, will be rebranded in January 2008 as StoryMill 3.0. StoryMill will cost $44.95 (or $49.95 for a boxed version), and will be available to current registered Avenir users for a $15 upgrade fee. Although Mariner Software is taking over distribution and QA for StoryMill, Todd Ransom, the original Avenir developer, will be retaining creative control over the program. Todd expects to release a StoryMill beta shortly.

StoryMill 3.0 is definitely a piece of software to keep an eye on, as besides being a complete rebranding with Mariner’s greater resources at its disposal, it is also a large update to Avenir in its own right and will include the hotly anticipated (at least by me and other Avenir forums lurkers) timelines feature, along with a number of others.

Although not strictly tagging software, Quicksilver, one of the two best application launchers and all-around Mac enhancements (the other being LaunchBar), has been released as open sourced software to the general community. Although the developer has been promising this for quite some time, that it’s actually been accomplished is quite exciting; hopefully some talented programmer with lots of time on their hands will pick up the project and provide a much-need bug fix and overall revamp. Quicksilver is a beautiful piece of software, and one of the staples in many peoples’ do-it-yourself file system tagging systems.

If you yourself are interested in taking a peek at the source code, it is freely available from the BlackTree Google Code site. The current BlackTree release of Quicksilver remains a beta, although it has been updated for 10.5.

WebNoteHappy, the tag-friendly bookmarks manager, has been updated to 1.3.1. This minor update includes a couple of Leopard fixes to the tagging field, and the ability to select bookmarks with enter and delete them with forward delete.

For more information, see the 1.3.1 blog announcement. The update is available via the WebNoteHappy website or the program’s internal auto-updating.

InfiniteNil, developer of PackRat, has been busily releasing very minor updates for PackRat that fix crashes and problems running under Leopard. These are very minor updates; in fact, there are no release notes, really, just a couple of bare-bones blog announcements.

If you’re running Leopard, updating to the latest version is highly recommended, and can be done from the PackRat webpage.

Although I personally find Avenir more to my taste (if only for its superior tagging and amazing annotations), Scrivener’s open-ended index-card way of working has made it something of a celebrity among writing applications. Tagging may take a back seat in Scrivener, but it’s certainly available once you’ve gotten over the initial mind-boggling deluge of features, and now Scrivener has received a fairly major update to version 1.1. I’d try to summarize the changes, but frankly I can’t. The release notes list 261 feature changes, bug fixes, and so forth. The change newbies to Scrivener (or those who tried it in the past and want another shot) will find most interesting is that the trial has not only been reset (so that you can try it again if you tried it in the past), but now it gives you 30 non-consecutive days to try the program (only counting days when you launch it).

Scrivener 1.1 is available from the Scrivener website or through the in-program auto-update and is an update well worth downloading.

Pukka, a del.icio.us client, has been updated to 1.6.3. This minor update fixes bugs under Tiger and Leopard, including a hang and potential crash. Unless you’re experiencing a lot of hanging and crashing, you’ll probably be safe updating via the auto-update feature the next time you launch Pukka.

To hear it from the horse’s mouth, see the 1.6.3 blog announcement.

PackRat, an application that allows you to use your Backpack offline and/or outside your web browser, has been updated to 1.5. This update brings bug fixes for Leopard (what release in the past few days hasn’t?), and more importantly adds back the ability to reorder your list items. It also introduces the ability to add an item at a specific point as a stop-gap until the developer is able to implement general item reordering. And last, you can now edit and remove dividers.

For more information, please see the PackRat 1.5 blog announcement.

iGTD 1.4.5.6 has received a minor pick-me-up today. If you’re running Leopard, then pick it up over at the iGTD downloads page. This minor update provides the ability to link to specific Mail.app messages whether or not you have MailTags installed and fixes a pair of bugs that affected editing tasks.

For more information, see the blog announcement.

Avenir, Tagamac’s choice for writing software, has been updated to 2.3.7. This point release fixes a bug with annotations and brings full support for Leopard. Leopard introduced a bug in how Avenir dealt with tags that prevented projects with tags in them from opening, which has fortunately been fixed.

Although the update is not currently showing up in the program’s auto-update, if you’re running Leopard you should grab it from the Avenir forums.

iGTD, a powerful GTD task manager with tagging support, has been updated to 1.4.5.6. This minor update is intended for users of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard only, and mainly re-implements adding tasks to iGTD via the function keys for most major programs. iCal synching is still unavailable.

Although iGTD will eventually be merged back into a single application that is compatible with both Tiger and Leopard, the developer wished to get the fix out as soon as possible. For more details, please see the 1.4.5.6 announcement.