Tagamac

Default Folder X, one of the applications I find absolutely essential to my workflow, is on sale today, October 27, 2008 only for $19.95 over at the MacUpdate Promo.

Default Folder X has a slew of great features, but the one interesting to taggers is that you can define Spotlight comments when you save a file. This is possibly the best way to maintain a tagging system, since tagging when you save removes the need to go back over your files and organize them (which is unlikely to happen for most of us). If you haven’t tried Default Folder X yet, I strongly recommend it even for those people who aren’t interested in file system tagging. This is one of those applications that I wasn’t really sure if I needed, but then after I’d used it for a few days wondered how I’d survived without it.

Once again I find myself slightly behind on the times, this time thanks to moving (no longer in a wasteland of apartments, I’m now living in lower Queen Anne; the difference is night and day). Some minor updates that may prove of interest include Shoebox 1.7.4, MarsEdit 2.2.1, PackRat 1.7.3, and Things 0.9.5. Shoebox now apparently has better Photoshop integration; MarsEdit fixes a number of bugs and introduces better AtomPub support; PackRat fixed some problems with Textile conversion; and Things now allows you to sort tasks by due date (along with bug fixes). Things also has a tentative release date: January 2009 at the MacWorld expo.

For more details about the MarsEdit update, see the 2.2.1 blog announcement. For more info about Things see the release notes or 0.9.5 blog announcment. The other software didn’t provide much in the way of release notes.

PackRat, the desktop frontend for 37signal’s Backpack, has received a price drop from $24.95 to $14.95.

Aside from the benefit of an OS X rather than web-based interface, PackRat also offers the ability to access your Backpack information offline. For more details about the program, see the PackRat website.

For those software developers amongst us, you may be interested to note that M Cubed Software has released Lighthouse Keeper 1.0. Similar to PackRat, Lighthouse Keeper is little more than a desktop frontend to an existing web application, in this case the issue tracker Lighthouse. Lighthouse Keeper offers the ability to manage your Lighthouse projects without needing a site-specific browser or similar solution, as well as adding offline access to your Lighthouse-tracked issues and the ability to quickly add an issue with a system-wide hotkey. And, of course, tagging is a primary organizational offering of Lighthouse Keeper. Lighthouse Keeper is available as a free demo with a registration fee of €30.

I find it intriguing that the number of desktop frontends to subscription-driven web apps is increasing. Certainly for those people who use these web apps, a desktop companion that allows offline access (among other perks) would be fantastic, but for the vast majority of users the application is barely worth a cursory glance. Unless you have a Lighthouse account, you can’t even run Lighthouse Keeper to put it through its paces; the first thing you see when you launch it is a sheet that requires you to fill in your Lighthouse account details or quit. I think to some extent applications like this are approaching from the wrong direction: we don’t need desktop frontends to specific web apps; what we need are desktop applications with full functionality that can also tie into one or more web apps. Perhaps such functionality will make its way into Lighthouse Keeper down the road, but for now the program will only be of interest to those already using, or thinking seriously of adopting, Lighthouse.

PackRat, the desktop companion to Backpack, has been updated to version 1.7. This update fixes image update issues for all users (including PowerPC folks), and improves page rendering time thanks to a change in the libraries powering the software.

For slightly more information, check out the blog announcement.

MarsEdit, the trimmed down blogging software from Red Sweater, has been updated to version 2.2. This version introduces AtomPub support, customizable image markup using MarsEdit’s standard macro language, and significant performance improvements for launch time (along with a few other minor changes). The image markup in particular is a godsend; no more deleting width and height tags for every image and adding a custom class or two. Set it up once, and you’re good to go.

For more details about the update, see the blog announcement.

Default Folder X, a great piece of software and particularly interesting for its helpfulness in home-grown tagging systems, has been updated to version 4.0.7. This minor update includes a fix to allow Spotlight keyword saving in Word 2008 save dialogs, a fix to make sure the recent folders list works in Word 2008 dialogs, and numerous other small bug fixes.

For more details and to download the new version, see the release notes.

I got a little behind again last week and let a couple updates go by, but here they are: Code Collector Pro, the tag-based snippets manager, has been updated to 1.2.4, a minor update of mainly bug fixes (see the blog announcement or change log for more). Together was updated to 2.1.5, bringing some changes to Shelf behavior along with several minor bug fixes and small improvements (see the release notes for full details). PackRat, the desktop front-end for 37signals’ Backpack, was updated to version 1.6.2 which brings some fixes to images and attachments (see the blog announcement for info).

Along with those minor updates, Cha-Ching 2.0 has been released as an early public beta. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it will be interesting to see if the second version is able to fix some of the many issues that marred the first. Cha-Ching is one of those applications that I want to love, but have trouble using regularly because it just isn’t quite perfected yet.

MailTags, one of my favorite and most-used tagging plugins, has been updated to version 2.2.1. This minor version bump includes the ability to undo tag edits, a improved stability, and some bug fixes including a fix for an issue where tags were not being included in replies and forwards.

For more information and to download, visit the MailTags release notes.

Hazel, a program for automatically doing any number of things to files on your Mac, has been updated to version 2.2. This version includes the ability to create patterns for matches, the ability to embed AppleScripts or shell scripts directly into your rules, relative date matching, and much more. For details, see the release notes.

Hazel is one of those one-of-a-kind pieces of software that can be amazingly helpful if you take the time to set it up but may at first glance seem too esoteric to be worth downloading. Admittedly, I have never taken the time myself yet, but particularly if you are trying to create a file system tagging workflow Hazel could be an essential part of making sure that all your files get tagged and sorted as you create them without having to expend a lot of effort along the way. Hopefully sometime in the near future I’ll be able to play with it and provide a bit more specific advice; for now, though, you should definitely be aware of the possibilities of Hazel if you’re trying to automate your tagging tasks.