Tagamac

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.

If it is still October 18, 2007 and you don’t already own MailTags, then quit reading this stupid blog post and go buy MailTags for 33% off at MacZot now. MailTags is one of the very few pieces of Mac software, tagging or otherwise, that I recommend without reservations to everyone. If you use Mail.app and want to lead anything like a productive life, then you need MailTags.

Purchasing it now not only gives you access to what I’ve called the One True Tagging Tool on the Mac, but also a free upgrade to the Leopard-ready version when it’s released. Don’t miss this one.

Although you are probably already aware, OS X 10.5 Leopard has gone on sale for preorder, and will be arriving Oct. 26th, as the countdown on Apple’s homepage makes abundantly clear.

I haven’t heard word yet what the changes to the metadata are like (the big question: will tagging system files be easier?), but hopefully the metadata will be more tag-friendly and we can get away from the ever-so-imperfect Spotlight comment. I will of course be posting more information as it comes available, and once my copy arrives I’ll try to suss out the metadata changes (if any) as soon as I can.

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.

A little while ago, Freelance Switch posted a list of 35 essential Mac apps. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the list. Aside from its complete lack of any meaningful organization (except its implied ranking from “most essential” to “less essential”), it included software that hasn’t been released yet while excluding a lot of really great software that’s been out for a while. Sure, Things looks pretty cool, but since no one can use it, how can it be “essential”?

I’ve finally finished writing up my own list of 35 essential Mac apps, posted over on Beckism.com. There’s some overlap with Freelance Switch, and some of the really good stuff from Freelance Switch didn’t make it on because I personally don’t find it particularly essential, so you’ll probably want to check out both lists. Of course, it doesn’t have much to do with tagging (I haven’t needed tagging software for my freelance work, so there isn’t much tagging software on the list), but I figured you’d be interested nonetheless. Enjoy!

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.

Notae, the completely tag-based digital notebook, has been updated to version 2.2. New features in this version include the ability to set certain notes as templates to later insert them into other notes via contextual menu, more robust contextual menus, the ability to auto-save documents when they close, and partial tag name matching in the search field when searching either all fields or tags. Numerous bug fixes are included, as well.

Although it is not perfect for every situation, Notae is one of my favorite applications for collecting large quantities of notes (I use it to track the tagging software over on the software page, among other things) and its tagging implementation is one of the best you’ll find in Mac software. If you’re looking for a simple application to gather your random snippets of text in, definitely give Notae a look. For more information about the 2.2 release, see the changelog or the 2.2 release announcement.