As MailTags forges it way towards an official Version 2.2, Scott Morrison has released the fourth public beta of the plugin.

In addition to a bunch of the usual improvements and bug-fixes (improving the reliability of the Spotlight Importer, tweaking some Preference options and settings, a nice resizable keyword token field which now displays all your tags), this latest release addresses a quirk with the way Gmail implements IMAP. In order to prevent problems, it now saves tags only to the local cache of Gmail accounts in Mail.app.

MailTags looks more polished, as Scott makes it into the most “native” plugin going around. It almost seems built-in to the app, rather than an added extra.

The pop-up dialogs for to-dos and events created on a Leopard Mail Note are now a fetching dark brown colour, which blends in nicely with the yellow lined-paper of the Note itself:

I missed the third public beta, being at the beach, so haven’t yet had a chance to note a change in the way MailTags is constructed.

Some elements are now split off as optional “extras” — plug-ins for the plug-in, so to speak — which promises a more efficient, more flexible, more user-customisable future.

It also provides a easy invitation for third-party developers to create specific MailTags plug-ins for their apps (OmniFocus, Yojimbo, Things, iGTD?).

Its iCal integration features are now a separate “extra” and a new feature, the Quick Message Colour Picker is another. It lets you colour-code the selected email with a single mouse click. A new Extras Preference Tab in the MailTags Pane controls their behaviour.

For example, in the Message Colour extra preferences, you can chose your preferred swatch colours and decide whether or not to delete the message colour when all MailTags info is deleted from an email.

If you don’t want an option to colour emails on the fly, you can just disable the extra in the Preferences:

Another small but useful feature in the new beta is the welcome return of the red icon to mark a tag that hasn’t been uploaded to the IMAP server yet. Mail users on dial-up connections at the beach (and probably elsewhere) will be pleased to see this back.

You can read more about MailTags for Leopard and download the newest, fourth public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions, bug reports or comments.

Tags: Apple Mail, applescript, events, iCal, imap, mail.app, mailtags, Productivity, public beta, tagging

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Michael Tsai has released an update to his tag-smart, open-format PIM app EagleFiler.

Michael could have aimed higher and called it EagleFiler 2.0; with over 110+ new improvements and tweaks, it certainly carries enough newness to warrant the higher number.

Fortunately, I don’t have to type them all out. Michael has provided a complete changelog for the update.

Here are five new features in the app that caught my eye:

1. IMAP support and smarter Mail.app capture. EagleFiler can now IMAP mailboxes and individual email messages from Apple Mail. Nice!
2. Omnivorous, universal importing. You can now import every file known to mankind into EagleFiler. If it doesn’t know how to display it, EagleFiler displays the icon for the file and lets you open it in another app.
3. Tag auto-completion. Tags now auto-complete as you type them, a great feature which saves both time and errors. EagleFiler now also displays an item’s tags in the status bar at the bottom of the window, so what you see them easily and edit or add to them.
4. Quick Editing of web archives. A new “Added Convert For Editing” command quickly converts web archives to RTFD files for editing.
5. Import of MailTags projects as tags. Emails marked with MailTags projects are tagged with those project names when imported into EagleFiler.

That only scratches the surface.

With the new tagging improvements especially, people who are into Getting Things Done (GTD) will find it even easier to adapt the tips in yesterday’s “Getting Things Done with Yojimbo” post to EagleFiler.

I find it hard to place EagleFiler into a hierarchy or scheme with other personal information managers (PIMs). It is more flexible but less polished than Yojimbo, more open but less fully featured than SOHO Notes, less powerful but less bloated than the DEVONthink projects.

Perhaps the best way for you to judge is to test it out yourself.

A demo is available from Michael’s site . If you like it, a licence costs USD 40.

Tags: Apple Mail, emails, imap, information manager, mail.app, PIM, Productivity, tagging, tags

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Bare Bones has updated Yojimbo, adding support for tagging, hyperlinks, better handling of passwords, improved web archive support and some interface tweaks (see the full changelog here ).

The big ticket item for many will be tagging. And Bare Bones has left no stone unturned in implementing it.

Tags can be entered in the item’s Inspector, directly in the item’s details bar or through the quick input panel. In addition, new bookmarklets for the major Mac browsers allow the option of adding tags at the point of bookmarking or archiving a web page.

You can find the new bookmarklets by searching Yojimbo’s help for “bookmark”.

As one would expect the tags are nice aqua tokens. They auto-complete and Yojimbo even offers you options if your typing matches more than one, as you can see here in a screenshot of tagging via an item’s new look details bar:

Yojimbo lets you find tagged items again by searching for them or by creating “tag collections”, smart folders that match on user-defined tags. It can also display them as a new column in the interface’s main view.

Unfortunately, the tag collections can only match items with “all” the nominated tags. There is no “any” option. Surely that will soon be fixed:

People looking for a more keyboard-orientated way to tag, will be glad to find that two tab-key strokes bring you to the tagging field in an item’s details bar.

The new version also provides for hyperlinking within items. You can add web URLs or links to emails with LinkABoo or (soon) MailTags and add links to files and folder just by dragging them onto the hyperlink dialog:

Lists and Tables are now supported in notes too, which is nice.

Other new features include provision for Yojimbo to use Apple’s Keychain, more details options for how passwords are handled and Command-clicking in web archives to open URLs in the background.

Perhaps I should also mention that Yojimbo users who also use Mail.app will get a lot of mileage out of an applescript that pipes selected emails into Yojimbo. I use this a lot.

Yojimbo costs USD 39 (educational licence USD 29). The full version and a demo are available from Bare Bones’ web site .

UPDATE: Patrick Rhone has some interesting thoughts on the new tags in Yojimbo 1.3 vs. traditional sorting by sub-folders, part of the great “tag in one archive vs. file in folders” debate.

Tags: Apple Mail, hyperlinks, mail.app, personal imformation manager, PIM, Productivity, tagging, yojimbo

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SpamSieve developer Michael Tsai has released a personal information manager that takes the fight right up to established apps like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes.

While EagleFiler is a powerful, fully-featured information manager, it offers more flexible tagging and annotation options than other apps. Also, although it uses a Core Data SQL database to track your files, it stores them in an “open format” library or Finder folder, just like iPhoto or iTunes. This will not only please open format advocates, but allows other apps to access the data easily and makes backups much more efficient.

The interface has the much admired three-pane Mail-like look (just like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes):

It provides numerous ways for importing or capturing the information you want to store. A system-wide capture key (F1 by default) allows you snag info (EagleFiler handles emails from all the major email clients, web pages, PDFs, word processing files, iChat logs, audio files and more - see the full list ) without interrupting your workflow, although files can also be dragged to the Dock icon, interface or dedicated “Drop Pad”.

Integration with Growl is a nice touch, providing notification of successful capture without the need to switch apps and check.

Mail can’t (yet) be imported directly from IMAP accounts, but has to be moved to a local folder first. Michael says that he hopes to overcome this limitation in later releases.

To make up for that, MailTags users will be delighted to hear that EagleFiler will import its tags along with the emails. Nifty!

It also provides flexible ways of organising your data. Hierarchical folders and labels allow “folder-lovers” every opportunity to indulge; it even supports multiple libraries for the ultimate in data separation.

“Archivers” will value the ability to find things in one huge folder through the app’s Search function which supports Boolean or phrase searches.

Tag support is something that Yojimbo and SOHO Notes don’t provide. In EagleFiler you can tag each items with as many tags as you want.

A tag pane allows you to add, customise and add color to your tags.

You can also set a character or symbol for each tag, which shows up in the app’s main viewer.

Tags are also displayed in the folder list on the left, so that it is easy quickly to find all the items with a particular tag.

Further options for labelling, naming and tagging are provided by an Inspector window.

You can enter tags in a field obscured in the screenshot by the drop-down menu for the labels (which are Finder labels and can be edited in Finder’s Preferences pane).

People who feel constricted by Yojimbo’s lack of support for hierarchical folders or restricted meta-data options will love the flexibility EagleFiler offers without the need to switch to SOHO Notes’ OpenBase database engine.

EagleFiler’s preferences are minimal and mainly control the look of the interface.

You can also customise the capture key here.

EagleFiler also pitches itself as an archiver for Mail.app and other email clients.

Michael suggests:

Most e-mail programs are designed for communicating with your mail server and letting you read and write messages—not for storing all your old mail. By cleaning out your mail program’s database, you can remove some clutter from its mailbox list and speed it up. But cleaning it out doesn’t have to mean lots of time wasted trying to predict which messages you might need in the future. Disk space is plentiful—just archive all your old mail into EagleFiler. Later, you’ll be able to find what you need with a quick search. Meanwhile, the archived messages will no longer be slowing down Spotlight searches of your files and current messages.

I was very impressed. It is more flexible than Yojimbo. Its open format makes it more attractive than SOHO Notes. EagleFiler doesn’t have the full range of extra features — syncing, blogging support, full-screen option, alarms, etc — that SOHO Notes provides. That’s a pleasing lack of feature bloat for me. YMMV.

EagleFiler is shareware (USD 40) and a 30 day free demo is available from Michael’s web site .

Tags: archiving, Michael Tsai, open format, personal information manager, PIM, Productivity, SOHO Notes, tagging, yojimbo

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It’s a great day for Mail.app users. The public beta of MailTags 2.0 has been released, bringing with it full IMAP tag support, tagging of outgoing messages, tag sharing, a revamped, more flexible MailTags pane, the display of keywords, projects and other MailTags info in the ListView and more.

In some ways it offers better productivity features than Leopard Mail and it’s here now.

IMAP tag support

Probably the most anticipated new feature is full support for tagging emails in IMAP accounts.

This is achieved by storing the keywords, projects and other metadata in encoded X-MailTags headers in the email itself. When new MailTags information is added, MailTags writes a new copy of the message to the server. The metadata is stored server-side, making it available on any Mac you use which has MailTags 2.0 installed. Synchronised tagging has arrived whether you are in the office, at home or on the road.

You can also choose to save the metadata in clear text so that other email clients like Thunderbird will be able to read it.

The MailTags Pane

Many of the new features in this beta are best understood from the new-look MailTags pane.

Individual sections of the pane can be hidden or shown as you prefer by clicking on the disclosure triangle in the top left of its header.

Interaction with iCal continues to improve. Support for to-dos allows you to set priorities, due dates and to add comments in the Notes field. You can set a default calendar for MailTags to use in the MailTags Preferences.

The linkage between Mail.app and iCal has been improved through the use of a new URL format (message://mymessage-id @ server.com) which will find the relevant email regardless of the actual file location.

The Notes field now automatically expands with the size of the window, so that verbose people like me can see all the info for a particular email more easily.

In another much-hoped improvement, the Notes field can be used to replace the subject line of the email (see the subject line in italics in the screenshot below). Neat!

In the Compose window MailTags pane, additional options allow you to tag your outgoing message and/or tag the original message with the same tags as the reply. You can also create a rule to accept reject tags based on any criteria (such as member ship in a specific address book group).

This is a real bonus for work groups. Tagging outgoing messages gives people working on shared projects the ability to accept and share tags with other collaborators.

Of course, you may run into a nutcase using MailTags 2.0, so the option to refuse attached tags is also included.

Seeing your tags in the ListView

One of my favourite new features is the ability to see your projects and tags in the Message ListView, which provides additional and immediate visual cues about what you need to get done.

Command-clicking on any column header to add or remove the project, keyword, priority and due date columns.

When matched to the project-related colour coding of messages, you know at once what needs to be done in what sphere of your life:

The expanded Preferences now contain a number of separate panes to manage the plugin’s options. These options and MailTags 2.0’s other new features are set out in an expanded and comprehensive readme file.

How does it compare with Leopard Mail, or at least, with as much of Leopard Mail as we have seen? As Scott says,

While Mail 3.0 brings some MailTags-like features to Mail, MailTags continues to add many features not included with Mail 3.0, including keywords, project and priority tagging, saving notes directly with message, changing subject lines, dynamic coloring of messages, full integration with rules and smart mailboxes, and more.

Upgrade Warning!!

Installing MailTags 2.0 will erase the settings for MailTags 1.2.2. This is set out at the top of the plugin’s new readme file, but is worth repeating. However, MailTags 2.0 saves a backup of your info so that can go back to MailTags 1.2.2 if you decide that the beauty and power of MailTags 2.0 is not for you.

Registration and Special Offer

MailTags 2.0 is not donation-ware. It is shareware (USD 29.95). After a trial 30 day period, unregistered users will be unable to tag messages.

During the beta test period, you can purchase MailTags 2.0 for a reduced price of USD 25 by following the links in MailTags preferences.

MailTags has more than quadrupled the productivity grunt of Mail.app for me. It is money very well spent.

You can get the public beta from Scott’s site where you will also find a support forum for all your MailTags queries.

Of course, MailTags 1.2.2 will continue to be available too under the same donation-ware conditions as before. MailTags 1.2.2 users can look forward to an update with minor bug fixes later this week.

Tags: Apple Mail, collaboration, iCal, imap, mail.app, mailtags, Productivity, tagging, to dos, workgroups

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WebnoteHappy has been updated. This clever app with an unfortunate name is a bookmark manager that allows you to tag and annotate your links.

The new version (1.2) brings support for syncing your bookmarks with your del.icio.us account, adds hot key support for Firefox and Shiira, clickable hyperlinks in the notes field and more.

All the fields in a WebnoteHappy webnote are now editable, including the URL itself.

The app sells itself partly as a native Mac OS X interface for del.icio.us and it does look nice:

You can read the full list of changes in the release notes .

WebnoteHappy is shareware (USD 24.95) and is available from the developer’s web site.

Tags: "delic.io.us", bookmarks, FireFox, Internet, not apple mail, tagging, URLs, web 2.0

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