At last I can feel comfortable about upgrading to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard: MailTags has a public beta for Mail.app 3.0. While the beta appears to be stable (hence its being made public), you should keep backups of your mailboxes. To-do and event capabilities have also been temporarily removed, as iCal interoperability has changed dramatically.
For a full description of what’s working and what’s not, see the 2.2b5 forum announcement.
Big Robot Software has posted a notice that while TagBot is mostly compatible with Leopard, showing tagged files does not yet function. If you’ve upgraded to Leopard, you’ll still be able to use TagBot to apply and import tags, but until Big Robot is able to release a full bug fix, double clicking a tag in the list will be pretty pointless.
They point out that the incompatibility has no harmful side effects, so you can continue to use TagBot with impunity; you’ll just need to browse your tags some other way (for instance, through the much speedier Spotlight).
Pukka, a desktop del.icio.us client, has been updated to 1.6.2. This minor update brings full compatibility with OS 10.5 (with the caveat that developers weren’t given the Gold Master, so there may be one or two more bugs to quash) and some minor bug fixes.
For details, please see the 1.6.2 blog announcement.
If you weren’t already having a good day, then here’s some news to cheer you up: EagleFiler, the Finder-friendly file library, has been updated to 1.2.6. This update brings a slew of bug fixes and cosmetic enhancements including an updated Leopard-style source list, capturing from MarsEdit, scripts for capturing via LaunchBar or Quicksilver, French and German localizations, and improved import speed. This definitely looks like a great update to install, although keep in mind that once you’ve opened an EagleFiler library in 1.2.6 it will not open in previous versions (the files will still be accessible from the Finder, of course).
For more information, please see the 1.2.6 blog announcement.
TaskPaper, a very slimmed-down text-based “getting things done” style task manager, was released yesterday for the introductory price of $18.95 (with a 15 day trial). TaskPaper cuts task management down to the bare essentials: projects, tasks, and tags, and may be the perfect solution if you are not interested in the feature-rich offerings of applications such as iGTD or the forthcoming OmniFocus or Things. I highly recommend you check this program out; it’s an ingeniously simple take on task management.
Off-topic, apologies for the lack of updates recently; I moved into a new apartment Monday, and was only able to get the internet hooked up Tuesday (making me wish that I, too, had a hammer and knew how to use it).
The developers of the tag-based PDF file library Yep have just released a public beta of an exciting piece of new file system tagging software called Leap. Leap bills itself as a tag-based Finder replacement, and features an interface that is strongly reminiscent of Yep, but also uses a kind of bastardized child of Spotlight and the Leopard Source list. In a way Leap is a specialized front-end to Spotlight combined with the tag-based file library features of Yep. It also includes some very cool previewing features (the loupe in particular is a nice touch). I’ll be writing a more in-depth look at Leap in the near future, but why wait? Go download it for yourself and see what it’s all about.
Although final pricing has not yet been announced, the developers are offering a free copy of Leap (when released) to anyone who purchases a Yep license during the public beta. I’m pretty jazzed to try Leap, since it’s about time a decent file system tagging system hit the market. Whether Leap can truly replace the Finder, of course, remains to be seen, but hopefully Leap will at the very least encourage other developers to try a few new things when it comes to file system tagging.
Hot on the heels of the recent 2.2 update is Notae 2.2.1. This minor update addresses a small number of bugs that made it through into 2.2. For more information, see the 2.2.1 blog announcement.
The developer also wants to reinstate support for French and German localizations, and is looking for someone fluent in English and French or German who would be willing to translate the dozen or so strings that have been added since the program was last localized. If you are interested, feel free to jump over to the Code Poetry website and contact him.
KIT, a tag-based file library for the Mac, has been updated to 1.3.10. This minor version includes several bug fixes, including problems with web archives loading incorrectly and problems with dragging files to other applications.
For more details, see the release notes or the in-program auto-updating.
VoodooPad, everyone’s favorite wiki-style idea repository, has been updated to version 3.2.2. This minor update is mainly made up of bug fixes for all three flavors of VoodooPad (lite, standard, and pro) without adding any new features. The update is available through VoodooPad’s in-program auto-updating, or you can always download the most recent copy from the website if for some reason you don’t like Sparkle.
For more information, please see the VoodooPad release notes.
PackRat, the Mac offline frontend to BackPack, has been updated to 1.4. This version brings PackRat fully up to date with BackPack’s newest updates, and most importantly resolves synching issues that users were seeing in 1.3.x. It also adds the ability for PackRat to display various objects from BackPack (including dividers) in the proper order.
For more information, please see the 1.4 blog announcement.