Tagamac

Yesterday was a big day for tagging; aside from the release of Tags, Ironic Software officially released OpenMeta, their new open source framework for tagging miscellaneous files using extended attributes (xattr) on Mac OS X 10.5. In addition to the OpenMeta code itself, they also released Tagger—a free utility for tagging, rating, or finding files using OpenMeta—and OMTool—a command lined utility for working with OpenMeta metadata. Both utilities are available for download from the Ironic Software homepage.

The exciting part about OpenMeta is that developers finally have a standardized way to assign and read tags on files (other than the less-than-ideal Spotlight comment hack of yore) which has the potential to free users from getting tied down to a particular solution. Aside from Tags and Deep (the first of which is compatible with OpenMeta, the second of which was the first program to use it), MailTags is also in the process of joining the OpenMeta bandwagon (not available in public builds yet, unfortunately). Hopefully software like Together, EagleFiler, and others of that ilk will also begin to incorporate OpenMeta, allowing users to tag and find files across the system and their various tagging programs without needing to keep all of those programs running.

Yesterday Gravity Apps released a new file system tagging solution called, simply enough, Tags. Even after playing with it for less than a day, I can say definitively that Tags is the most elegant and easy to use tagging solution available on the Mac, and I strongly recommend that anyone interested in a generic file tagging solution give it a try. Using an approach to tagging reminiscent of Quicksilver, Tags allows you to tag virtually anything on your computer by invoking a single hotkey (control-space by default). And when I say virtually anything, I mean exactly that: files in Finder, emails in Mail, addresses in Address Book, bookmarks in Safari, photos in iPhoto, and the list goes on. Once you’ve tagged a few files you can find them easily simply by hitting the hotkey twice and using Tags’ searching interface, by creating a Smart Folder from within Tags, or simply by prefacing the tag with “tag:” in a Spotlight search. This is the first application I’ve used where tagging items and then searching for them in Spotlight just felt like magic; Gravity Apps has obviously paid very close attention to making Tags a first class OS X citizen.

The best news, however, is that besides being beautiful and so easy to use my tech-challenged grandmother could probably figure it out, Tags doesn’t use Spotlight comments or any other such hackery to accomplish its tagging. It instead uses extended attributes in a way that is compatible (or possibly identical) with OpenMeta, the open source tagging framework recently released by Ironic Software and incorporated into their photo tag browser Deep. For anyone who has been frustrated with the numerous limitations of Spotlight comment tagging, this is fantastic news indeed. Tags is available as a free trial from the Tags website, and when you’re ready to buy is priced at $29.

As if the choice wasn’t difficult enough already, yet another Getting Things Done application entered the wild today; Potion Factory today released a public preview version of The Hit List, a GTD app that treads a middle path between OmniFocus‘ high-powered outlining and Things‘ beautiful minimalism, with a dash of TaskPaper‘s text-based tagging for good measure. By combining outlining-style task management with the concept of lists and robust text-based tagging, The Hit List is an application that will likely appeal to those who love OmniFocus’ flexibility but are yearning for an application with a little more visual pizazz.

Some of my personal favorite features of The Hit List include the tabs (which essentially allow you to save snapshots of the sidebar and navigate between them, something which Things is sorely lacking), the wonderful notebook-paper inspired themes, and the in-depth and easy to get into keyboard navigation. If OmniFocus or the recently released Things don’t quite scratch your task management itch, The Hit List will be well worth checking out. According to its early testers, The Hit List is stable enough for daily use despite being in beta and not yet feature complete. If you fall in love with The Hit List you can preorder it for $49.95; the price after release will jump to $69.95, and it is completely free during the public preview. For more information and to download the application, visit the Hit List public preview announcement.

After months of semi-public and public betas, Things has finally been released! Things is a beautiful and slim-lined task manager that relies on tagging to allow you to add just as much information to your tasks as you need. I’ve been using it since the early semi-public alphas, and it is one of my favorite examples of tagging done right and a staple of my workflow.

Things’ visual appeal should be obvious, but there’s also some recently added features worth noting. One of my favorites is that Things has always sorted tasks based on the tags you’re filtering by, but as of the release candidates the Today view doesn’t segregate tasks by project so you can organize tags by priority across projects simply by tagging them. Other note-worthy features since I last posted about Things are a refined interface, global searching across the entire library, an iPhone app that at last supports tags, and a much clearer delineation between projects and areas. I strongly recommend Things for anyone who finds OmniFocus too complex and TaskPaper too limiting. Things is available for $49.95; for more information about recent new features see the release notes.

Big news for those interested in file organization! Devon Technologies yesterday released a public beta of the long-awaited DevonThink 2.0. Among other things, DevonThink 2.0 offers the ability to open multiple databases at the same time, a completely revitalized interface, a web interface to your database, saves files to its database as-is (thus allowing them to be edited by external programs), smart groups for sorting your files, and at long last adds tagging (sort of). DevonThink has always been one of the most feature-rich file libraries available, and with version 2.0 it at last is a bit more friendly. If you need a lot of power and automation (particularly sorting/grouping automation) and don’t mind sacrificing the Finder-friendly approach of Together or EagleFiler for a database, then you’ll need to give DevonThink 2.0 a serious look.

The downside to the first public beta is that it doesn’t actually have much in the way of tagging support. There’s a place for tags in the Get Info window, but you can’t edit them (the contents currently defaults to the groups for a document). However, tagging (and presumably auto-tagging, given DevonThink’s long dedication to auto-sorting) is definitely on the radar for the final release. For more information about what’s new in DevonThink 2.0 and to download see the release notes and DevonThink 2.0 page. The first public beta will expire at the end of January, and upgrade options will be made available at the DevonThink website soon (they have announced, however, that users who purchased DevonThink 1.x after July 1, 2008 will receive a free upgrade to 2.0). DevonThink 2.0 requires OS 10.5.

Early this December Together, Hazel, StoryMill, and Evernote all received minor updates. Together 2.2.3 includes synching improvements and several minor bug fixes. Hazel 2.2.4 offers a number of crash and other bug fixes, including some minor UI improvements. StoryMill 3.2.1 fixes several bugs, including date entry problems and localization improvements. Evernote 1.2 primarily introduces a new feature for premium users only: file synchronization. Basically, premium users can now attach any file on your computer to a note and it will be synchronized between all of your Evernote clients (Mac, web, iPhone, etc.). The only limitation is that a single note cannot exceed 25 MB. Cool? Yes. Evernote has made a lot of improvements since I last wrote about it, so definitely give it a look if you need to access data from anywhere.

For more information on the various updates see Together’s release notes, Hazel’s release notes, the StoryMill 3.2.1 announcement, and the Evernote synchronization blog announcement.

Ironic Software, makers of Yep and Leap, yesterday released a new image searching and tagging program called Deep. Deep offers a unique approach to image searching by combining filtering by tags/keywords, location, size, and aspect ratio with color palette matching. As you build your search in the top portion of the window, the results are displayed in a carousel below with navigation reminiscent of cover flow. As with Leap, tags include not only keywords that you’ve assigned to your images, but folder names, as well, providing you with a very complete list of keywords even if you’ve never tagged a photo. Unlike Leap and Yep, however, Deep is not focused on organizing photos. Although you can add tags to a photo, the program’s primary focus is on finding photos that are similar to one another, leaving the task of organizing, importing, or editing those photos in the first place up to software better equipped for the job. Interestingly, Deep doesn’t use a database; all of its metadata (including tags and color data) is included inside the extended attributes of your image files.

The awesomeness of Deep does come at a cost, however: Deep not only requires Leopard, but is Intel-only. It will not run on PowerPCs. Deep is available for $34 or as part of a package deal with Yep and Leap for $69, and the application includes a 21 day free trial. Definitely check out the manual for some very useful tips and tricks on using the software; although Deep is simple enough to pick up and use immediately (or almost immediately, given the need to index the colors of the images on your hard drive), there’s definitely more to the program than meets the eye.

One of the key problems I face every day is that I have two computers, one brain, and a tendency to forget things. Perhaps while at work I’ll see a link on Twitter that I’d like to read on my lunch break but which skips my mind once lunch rolls around. Or maybe I forget to fill out my timesheet details and the next day have trouble remembering what exactly I did all day. Sometimes I’ll be off work and see a program that I definitely want to remember to install on my work computer only to start work the next day oblivious. How do I track such minor details without wasting time or brain space? The answer, I’ve decided, is that I need a scratchpad: somewhere that I can quickly toss ideas, URLs, and thoughts that will be synchronized between my computers and contains some simple organizational scheme to allow me to easily identify what needs attention.

For the past few weeks I have been investigating software that might serve me as a scratchpad. Although I have not yet developed the perfect solution, I would like to share my first, somewhat flawed solution using Together from Reinvented Software. Together gets almost everything exactly right, but falls short for me thanks to the buggy and error-prone synchronization of MobileMe. Despite the shortcomings of its synchronization, however, setting up a scratchpad in Together is extremely easy and for people who don’t rely on synchronization (or perhaps just have better luck with MobileMe sync services than I) Together is an excellent choice for a scratchpad. [read more...]

EagleFiler and Default Folder X received minor updates in the past week or so. EagleFiler 1.4.3 includes numerous bug fixes, some new esoteric preferences, and other minor improvements. Default Folder X 4.1 removes the lag that normally existed for open and save dialogs, adds Open Office 3 support, and fixes other minor errors and bugs.

For more information about EagleFiler 1.4.3 see the release notes. Default Folder X includes information on what’s new on the Default Folder X download page.

In case you’ve been living in a box, the three most compelling options in the world of Mac task managers are: Things (if you like a simple, beautiful interface), OmniFocus (if you need lots of powerful features), and TaskPaper. TaskPaper eschews the standard feature bloat of GTD applications and provides instead the minimum tools you need to manage your tasks easily and effectively. TaskPaper task lists are plain text (so you can take and edit them just about anywhere) but enhanced with features like automatic formatting, archival of completed tasks, and easy filtering/searching of your task list. TaskPaper 2.0 adds a fantastic new search system (watch the screencast), a Things-style quick entry window to add tasks from anywhere on your computer, drag and drop organizing, a customizable theme system, Applescript support, and an even more attractive user interface.

I strongly recommend TaskPaper even to people who think their needs are met by more complicated software. There is nothing like using a minimalist tool like TaskPaper for a couple of weeks to learn exactly what features you can live without and which you desperately need in a task manager, and for many people TaskPaper will be the solution that finally gets out of their way and lets them complete their tasks rather than fiddling with them. TaskPaper 2.0 is a free upgrade to users of TaskPaper 1 (although it now requires OS 10.5), or is available for $29.95 with a free trial.