Tagamac

Nifty Box, a quirky alternative to some of the more popular file system tagging solutions, has been updated to 1.3; the main new feature is an enhanced ability to relocate moved files. As long as your files stay on the same hard drive, Nifty Box should no longer lose them (if you migrate to a new hard drive, it may still need a little help).

Sadly, Nifty Box has reached the end of the line. The developer has decided to pursue his true passion of working in the space industry, and Nifty Box will no longer be updated. The positive side of this is that the software is now available for free. For more information about the switch to freeware and how to transition your data out of Nifty Box, see the 1.3 blog announcement.

Punakea, one of the original file system tagging solutions, yesterday showed some signs of life with a minor bug fix update. Version 0.4.1 adds case sensitivity to tag autocompletion and stops deleting additional content in Punakea’s tags folder. Although the update itself is not terribly impressive, it’s nice to know that Punakea is still under development and not abandonware like TagBot. It will be interesting to see how the Punakea developers, who helped blaze the way with Spotlight comment tagging, react to the release of OpenMeta and Tags.

For more information, see the Punakea release notes or the “Hey! We’re not dead” blog post.

A freeware utility called Tag Folders was released today. Tag Folders, which is essentially a complex Applescript bundled as an application, allows you to create smart folders that apply tags to files that you drop on them based on their rules. So for instance, if you have a “work” tag folder and you drop a file on it, that file gets tagged with “work”. Open the folder, and you’ll find the file you just tagged (along with any others tagged “work”). Tag Folders works with all of the major tagging solutions (including Leap, Punakea, TagBot, and the Quicksilver tagging plugin), and offers a Finder-centric way to both assign and find tagged files.

Although I haven’t played around with it much, the application itself is fairly awkward (thanks in large part to being a complex Applescript), but what’s promising about it is the place that it can play in current tagging workflows. Tag Folders provides an interesting meeting place between something like FileSpot and whatever file system tagging solution you prefer, wrapped in a familiar, Finder-like package. Definitely worth checking out for anyone trying to tag their file system.

For those Yojimbo users out there, you may be interested to hear that Steven Huey just released Yojimbo Tag Cleanup, a simple application (essentially a collection of Applescript commands and command-line searches with a GUI) intended to help you locate the tags in Yojimbo that you are no longer using. It’s all too easy with tagging software to lose track of which tags are useful citizens and which are cruft that has hung around past its prime. With the artfully named Yojimbo Tag Cleanup, finding abandoned tags in Yojimbo should be much simpler.

On a somewhat related tangent, one of the features that I would love to see in tagging software would be simple statistics tracking. When using tags, the most useful information you can have is how much attention you give to a certain tag. How often you’ve used it versus how often you’ve browsed or searched for it, for instance. Being able to see explicitly what attention you give tags can make optimizing a tagging system extremely easy and save you a lot of unnecessary tagging that you may do out of habit. Yojimbo Tag Cleanup is a simple step in the right direction in this regard; it’s a shame that there aren’t any easy ways for third parties to help you identify other aspects of your tagging habits.

Punaka, the free file system tagging solution from nudge:nudge, has been updated to version 0.4 (technically beta software, but very stable). Punakea now requires OS 10.5, but if you’re running Leopard it’s well worth a download. Features include the ability to edit tags from directly within the tag browser, a Tags folder that automatically generates a folder structure corresponding to the tags you attach to files (complete with file aliases; this ain’t no smart folder, folks), a new Drop Box folder that will automatically attach tags to any files saved there (by default “untagged”), and numerous interface brush-ups and under-the-hood improvements.

Punakea is an excellent choice if you’re looking for file system tagging, but there is one major caveat: Punakea uses a very unfriendly syntax for Spotlight comment tagging. Although this means you can use spaces in your tags, tagging files by hand using Punakea’s syntax is difficult at best. The program provides workarounds (an excellent, unobtrusive sidebar for one), but to tag with Punakea you generally have to have the program running all the time. For more details about this update, see the release notes. Punakea 0.3.2 is still available for Tiger users.

Quick Tag, a tagging utility for iTunes, has been updated to version .6. While still beta, this update adds Leopard compatibility, a new icon, improved tagging speed and performance, a new tag cloud window, advanced control over tag delimiters, and a number of bug fixes.

For details about the .6 release, visit the blog announcement. To download, visit the Quick Tag page. For help with using Quick Tag, see the Quick Tag quick help.

The Nucle Browser beta, a Java cross-platform tagging solution, has been updated once more based on user feedback. Changes in this update include an improved GUI that makes it easier to add folders to McNucle and improvements in how Nucle Browser and McNucle server connected to one another on the same machine. Although I’ve noted my issues with this software before, the fact that it’s being actively improved is definitely a point in its favor.

For full details, see the iNuron blog post or the release notes.