tagging
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Keyword Manager 1.1 adds major keyword management features, more
Keyword Manager from Bullstorm scored a license purchase from yours truly the day we found it, and the feature-packed iPhoto keyword plugin recently had an unassuming but handy upgrade to v1.1. Clicking on the "What's New?" heading at Bullstorm's site reveals a strong list of new features, including: Address Book auto-completion Share keywords between photo libraries Alphabetic sorting of keyword lists Preferences windows Built-in software update If you've been looking for an easier-to-use and more powerful way to wrangle your iPhoto library, I highly recommend giving Keyword Manager's full-featured demo a try. One of its most useful features, besides highly streamlining the tagging/keyword assigning process, is its ability to filter keywords in a search. This is something iPhoto is sorely lacking, but Keyword Manager makes it easy to pick keywords to both search for and exclude. This feature alone is easily worth a good portion of the plugin's $19 USD (€19 in Sweden and EU) for a single license.
Keyword Manager for iPhoto
For as long as I can remember, Ken Ferry's Keyword Assistant has been the only iPhoto plugin (at least, AFAIK) for adding some real power and, dare I say, "tagging" to iPhoto's keyword system. Now there's a new kid on the block by the name of Keyword Manager, and it definitely brings some interesting features to the table. Keyword Manager uses two separate windows that both have their own keyboard shortcuts for toggling visibility. The first is a Quick Assigner window (pictured on right) which, as you might guess, allows you to quickly tag add keywords to your photos. It offers keyword completion (via a slick drop down menu) and support for multiple word keywords. The second panel (on left) is a very nice Keyword Manager, allowing you to organize keywords in a hierarchy to help keep your organization in check. Naturally, since both of these panels have their own keyboard shortcuts, you can call them even when in iPhoto's full-screen mode. All this is done with a very nice iPhoto Adjustment Panel-like UI.Now Keyword Manager is pretty impressive, but I think they're reaching just a little too high by charging $19 for a plugin, especially in light of Keyword Assistant being free. I think $14.99 would hit the sweet spot for a plugin like this, but then again, I admittedly haven't plunged into organizing my increasingly sprawling iPhoto library yet, so YMMV.[Update: Commenters Jools tipped us off to promotional codes at VersionTracker that drop the price to $12 in the US or €12 in the EU: VT-542U845 (US) and VT-542E845 (EU). No word on how long those codes are good for, but that's a much more reasonable price in my book.]Keyword Manager is available from Bullstorm, and a demo is available which allows you to assign keywords 75 times before requiring a license.Thanks Bernt
Yojimbo 1.3 brings tagging, loads of new features
Late last week, Bare Bones released an update to their excellent junk drawer app, Yojimbo, bringing it up to verison 1.3. I was going to post about it, but a hiccup in my database was preventing me to use the new version (I blame recent .Mac errors, as I'm having all sorts of syncing issues with other apps). Now that I've settled everything, however, I can honestly say this is one of the most pleasing and significant updates to a strong application. In addition to the typical bug fixes and behavior tweaks (you can see the extensive list of changes here), one of the many major additions is tags - users can now tag notes in Yojimbo, complete with support for searching by tags and smart tag collections (and a new Tags management panel in the preferences. Peep the screenshot:As you can see, not only did Bare Bones add tag support, but they did it right. Tags are separated by commas as opposed to restrictive spaces (I'm looking at you, del.icio.us), and yes - that's a Tag Collection you see below my Serial Numbers group (bonus points for still allowing users to change a Tag Collection's folder icon via the Inspector). I honestly can't say enough good things about the addition of tags to Yojimbo, but I need to leave room for the other major additions I mentioned, such as list and table formatting in notes, easy link creation (for both URLs and file system links), a new UI for the Item Details bar (which you can see includes an area for tags), and much, much more. If you're a Yojimbo user, or someone who's still looking for a good junk drawer app, I highly recommend this new version, as Yojimbo is really beginning to shape up well.
iTunes song tagging redux
We reported a method for tagging iTunes tracks and creating on-the-fly playlists way back in January. However, it involved using Quicksilver and a couple of home-grown scripts, but we can dig it if some of y'all aren't down with a tool as broad-reaching as Quicksilver. Fortunately for the rest of you, a web designer and developer named Steven Campbell has written up a basic method for tagging iTunes tracks and creating playlists based on those tags. It more or less involves revealing the comments column in the song list for easy access, and using a simple system of comma-separated words to get your iTunes tagging on. This can work wonders for Smart Playlists, and Steven offers a few examples in his post.For those still interested in the aforementioned Quicksilver scripts and tools, the author has issued a bit of an upgrade and a new script since we first reported them. First of all, the scripts now live at their own domain name, TuneTag.com. The scripts still allow you to tag the song you're listening to on the fly and create on-the-fly playlists from those tags, but the author also added a new script that lets you select any number of tracks in iTunes and tag them all in one fell swoop. As a Quicksilver fan I'm already in love with the power of these scripts, but either method should work well for bringing the web 2.0 tagging craze to iTunes.
Keyword Assistant updated for iPhoto 6.0.5
Apple updated their apps for Aperture 1.5's arrival, and Ken Ferry stayed right in step and updated his fantastic Keyword Assistant plugin for iPhoto, which we've mentioned before. Version 1.9.3 also brings a Russian localization to the table, meaning it now works in English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.Ken offers Keyword Assistant for free from his .Mac homepage.
TUAW touts tags
What's a blog without tags these days? I'll tell you what it is, hopelessly out of date. We here at TUAW have been tagging our posts like mad people for awhile now, but all of this tagging has been hidden from you. Today we cast aside the shroud that sheltered our poor little tags from the world's harsh gaze and expose the taggy underbelly of TUAW to you.What does all this mean to you? Well, let's say you're really interested in iPods and you don't much care for the rest of the stuff we blather on about. Go to the following url:http://www.tuaw.com/tag/ipod/And it is all iPod, all the time! This is of limited use if you can't subscribe to the tag, right? Luckily you can, just point your newsreader to:http://www.tuaw.com/tag/ipod/rss.xmlYou can do this with any tag you can think of, though if you try sousaphone I don't think you'll have much success. Ain't TUAW the greatest?
kip - iPhoto for your documents (digital or otherwise)
kip is one of the few applications to take a real stab at helping you organize all your documents, both digital and 'real world'. It combines the look and feel of iPhoto with the real world aggregate paradigm of Delicious Library, then tosses in some really slick tagging and .Mac syncing features for that finishing shine. On the left is a dynamically scaling tag cloud that keeps track of all the tags you've used on all documents. Mouse over it and smaller tags will scale up in size to help you read them better. Mouse over a document (as you see in the screenshot) and a live preview of that section of the document is displayed next to your mouse. Documents can be viewed from within kip or opened externally via Preview.The 'real world' aspect enters the scene when kip's scan function is used, as this app wants to help you organize all your documents, including those receipts and old tax returns that are just decomposing in a box somewhere.One of the drawbacks I've found after poking around with kip is that it seems very focused in the kinds of files it will accept. It takes picture files and PDFs, but not text files or (not surprisingly) Word docs. Overall though, this is a clever app with a nice implementation. It offers a lot of handy methods for storing all sorts of metadata, including author and URL, and seems to be one of the first i-app-like applications to do tagging well (hint hint, Apple!).This initial version of kip is free, but as its product site plainly states: the next version will require the purchase of a license, with the price TBD. Grab a copy while it's hot, and free![via digg]
Mockup of tagging in OS X
As WWDC draws near Mac geeks' thoughts turn to what new features will greet the Faithful in Leopard. Now, Mac users don't just stop at thinking about what they want to see, they create mockups. Matt Jalbert would like to see tagging implemented in the Finder and has created the mockup to the right. He would like to see tags auto-generated by the Finder and Spotlight integration (i.e. when you click on the tag 'bridge' it does a search of all other files tagged in the same way).Some people are already taking advantage of Spotlight to create tagging functionality, but it would be nice to see in the OS (if you're into tagging that is).
Flock releases 0.7 beta
Finally, after months of small alpha version bumps, Flock, the social web browser based on Firefox, has unleashed a 0.7 beta with a whole slew of updates, improvements and bug fixes. Along with a site re-design, check out their blog entry for a thorough rundown of what's new and what's still on the way.This beta-worthy version has been a long time coming, and my copy is downloading as I write this. In case you aren't familiar: Flock has Firefox at its core, but includes a ton of features and capabilities built around the concept of using and interacting with the web - not just surfing it. Features like built-in blogging, uploading to/keeping tabs on Flickr and integrated del.icio.us bookmarking are all on the feature list. It's quite a slick browser if you've been looking for a solid, integrated tool for both browsing and participating in the web. Check it out.[via Download Squad]
Details of upcoming Thunderbird 2.0 release
Hawk Wings has tracked down some details on a tantalizing v2.0 update to Thunderbird, Mozilla's email client. New features at the top of my list are message tagging, a tabbed message viewer and a built-in notification system. It's great to see more developers bringing the tagging paradigm to email, as Scott Morrison has done with his MailTags plug-in for Apple's Mail.Check out Mozilla's Thunderbird development blog for the full (and lengthy) post of what's coming in this major release for Thunderbird, including plenty of Mac-specific features and fixes.
Commercial Kodak scanner digitizes, tags old photos
In much the same way that Coinstar machines have revolutionized the way we deal with accumulated change, Kodak has unveiled a new commercial scanner that promises to batch-digitize stacks of old photos and assign them rudimentary chronological metadata. Introduced on the occasion of the EasyShare line's fifth birthday, the so-called "Scan the World" technology will be incorporated into modified check-scanning machines for initial deployment as stand-alone kiosks or behind the counter at drug stores, which can currently turn your bits into atoms, but not vice versa. According to Kodak, the scanners use software which is able to identify different photographic paper for estimating the decade in which the picture was shot, and can even group pictures featuring like individuals through facial recognition. Future versions of the application will also incorporate OCR capabilities for reading watermarks or handwritten notes on the back of photos, further improving the accuracy of the tagging engine.
MailTags 1.2.1 available, 1.3 to feature IMAP syncing
Dave Caolo posted about MailTags last August, but in case you're unfamiliar: MailTags is a fantastic plugin for Mail.app that allows you to both tag your messages and create iCal todos right from within Mail. MailTags' abilities go far beyond simply adding a few keywords though; you can also set projects, categories and priorities for messages and use all this new metadata to create a far more robust organizational system than simply filing messages in a 'todo' folder. Once MailTags is installed, a whole new set of search and rule criteria (such as due date, project, keyword and more) are baked into Mail.app for running searches or creating Smart Mailboxes and rules. It's a pretty amazing plugin, and I urge you to check out Scott Morrison's Indev site for the full details on everything MailTags is capable of.While MailTags 1.2.1 issues a host of bugfixes but no serious new features, I found out about it from this Hawk Wings post in which Tin Gaden states that MailTags 1.3 will have a new feature many users have been wishing for: IMAP tag syncing. So if you use Mail.app and MailTags on more than one Mac, you can soon keep your tags, as well as (I'm hoping) projects and priorities all in sync.With all that said, go take MailTags for a spin. It's donationware, so show Scott some PayPal love for the hard work he's putting into this most excellent of plugins.
