Tagamac

I like to think that tagging is straightforward. It may seem like a strange way to organize and find information at first, but once you get used to it the whole process is not that complicated.

However, even when a subject is not particularly complicated, it can still be difficult to talk about. I have found in my journey through life (and academia, which are not one and the same no matter what they tell you) that one of the most important parts of any discussion of a topic is solid definitions. As a result, I am going to try to break down using tags into simple definitions over the course of several articles. This article is the first, and defines the three actions that you will perform when working with tags: [read more...]

iGTD, formerly free, will be seeing the introduction of two paid versions sometime soon. iGTD Home&Office will include expanded synching capabilities, along with sharing of tasks between individuals on the local network. iGTD Pro will have the functionality of Home&Office, but will allow much greater access to your iGTD data by backing it up to a central server (possibly allowing such shenanigans as web access). Although there is no release estimate, the developer does intend to sell some of the upcoming features of iGTD Pro as plugins, allowing users to incrementally update their iGTD installation and customize it to their liking.

The free version, now dubbed iGTD Basic, will continue to be available. Cool as these new features sound, I must admit that I am merely hoping that the developer doesn’t make like Microsoft and decide to release iGTD Standard, Enterprise, and Ultimate as well.

The first beta of FileSpot 2.0, a Spotlight enhancer, was released today. Frankly, I’m a little curious about version 1.0; I’ve never heard of FileSpot before, although it looks like a nice and slick Spotlight replacement.

FileSpot has built-in support for tagging via Spotlight comments, which is nice to see. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can customize the tagging format, but this is still a program well worth checking out if you want something an interface a little more robust than Spotlight’s. It automatically gave me an “Open in Path Finder” contextual menu option instead of the standard Finder, too. Bonus points to Synthesis Studios for that.

In all honesty, best practices for tagging vary greatly depending on the type of tagging system and tag browser you are using. Additionally, because tags are so flexible, how you use them also relies a lot on what makes sense to you. There are still some things you should think about when you tag, though, and I think they’re important enough that I’m posting them now before I dive more in-depth into tags.

First off is tagging’s golden rule: be consistent. You can disregard every other piece of advice I give you, but consistency is the single thing you must strive for when tagging. Everything else is window dressing. That said, here are three things that I think almost every tag should be, regardless of what program or system you’re using: succinct, lowercase, and singular. [read more...]

iGTD, the free tagging-friendly “getting things done” program, now has a Dashboard widget for those times when you need to just toss something into your to do list and don’t have Quicksilver handy (although who would get caught without Quicksilver handy?). You can find the widget via the iGTD downloads page.

The developer promises more widgets in the future, as well. Should be interesting to see how iGTD gets expanded into the Dashboard.

Welcome to Tagamac, a new blog about Mac OS X software and the ubiquitous tag. Over the next several weeks I will be writing about tags and the Macintosh, from general information about what exactly tags are and how they are used, to specifically looking at the software on the Mac that uses tags.

You can look forward to updates on all of the Mac software that uses tags (that I’ve found, anyway), reviews of Mac tagging software, and general information about tagging that will hopefully be useful even for those who do not use tags on the Mac.

Although this may seem odd, at least at first I will not be discussing tags as an internet phenomenon. Tags may have gained their primary impetus through collaborative online spaces, but I have found that at least for me, the intrigue and the challenge of tags is less how I can use them online (which generally is fairly straight-forward) and more about how I can integrate them into the organization on my computer. Perhaps I will begin to look at tags online more in the future, but for now Tagamac is just like its name sounds: tagging on the Mac.

I hope you enjoy! The easiest way to read Tagamac is to subscribe via RSS (link at the top of the page). If you aren’t sure what RSS is all about, please read about RSS, including recommendations for RSS software. Also, I would love to hear your feedback on the site, the content, the design, or what you had for breakfast today. Please think about contacting me.