Tagamac

Keyword Manager, a standby for iPhoto-related tagging, is on sale today, May 5, 2008 only for 50% off over at MacZot.

Definitely a good deal if you’re interested in an easier way to tag your photos than iPhoto’s built-in keywords functionality. Keyword Manager provides an attractive HUD interface, hierarchical keywords, and more.

Today the MacUpdate “Parallels” Promo was launched. This bundle is a surprisingly good one, and includes a number of useful tagging applications including Leap, StoryMill, and Hazel. The apps that become unlocked if the bundle does well are also extremely appealing (Sound Studio and Parallels Desktop are both apps that I use myself). And MenuCalendarClock iCal is one of those apps that you’ll install and forget it’s there because its functionality should have been written into the OS.

I highly recommend the MacUpdate promo bundle if only for Leap and StoryMill. Leap in particular is probably the best file system tagging solution available, and StoryMill is my favorite creative writing software (and uses tagging for its primary organization). Assuming the bundle sells well enough to unlock all ten apps, you’ll be getting $474.76 worth of software for $65. Most surprising is that more than 50% of the apps are worth buying (normally with these bundles two or three are worthwhile and the rest are all fluff). FYI: the MacUpdate link in this post is an affiliate link because while I would have recommended this bundle anyway, I’d love it if someday Tagamac at least paid for its hosting costs. Click through from here if you want to show me a little love, or just visit MacUpdate on your own if you hate affiliate links in your soul.

StoryMill, my favorite creative writing software that incidentally features tagging, is on sale today March 7, 2008 only for $24.95 at MacZot (50% off the boxed price). This is a great deal; if you’re a fiction writer, I highly recommend taking a look at StoryMill.

People inevitably end up comparing StoryMill to Scrivener, but they’re really very different tools. Scrivener uses the metaphor of a 3×5 index cards and then makes you create your own structure. StoryMill uses the metaphor of scenes within chapters, and provides a structure, which for me at least makes writing easier since I spend less time worrying about how to organize things. StoryMill’s timeline feature is also the only one of its kind in creative writing software at the moment. If you’re a writer, this isn’t a sale you want to miss.

TaskPaper, the ultra-slimmed down task management software from Hog Bay Software, is on sale today, February 25, 2008 only for $12 (down from its current introductory price of $18.95) over at MacZot.

Been a while since MacZot had anything halfway worthwhile, but TaskPaper is definitely a well-designed app. Although TaskPaper isn’t fully-featured enough for me, for some people it’s the perfect minimalist way to keep track of your tasks. Even if you don’t end up buying it, I highly recommend trying to use it for a week just to discover which features actually matter to you in a task management app and which you can happily live without.

This has nothing to do with tagging. Sorry. I’m in the process of writing a couple awesome articles, if you care, but they aren’t ready for public consumption. Anyway, while I may write about tagging a lot here on Tagamac, I also have another place on the web where I write stuff called Beckism.com. I tend to write about web design, Mac software, fiction, and occasionally me. Basically the stuff in my life that I care about that isn’t tagging.

Check out the new design or read the redesign announcement for yourself! If you’ve visited before, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

As a telecommuter I don’t have a lot of interaction with real people over the course of a standard day, and I’ve gradually been trying to find new ways to get a bit more human interaction through that wonderful impersonal medium, the internet. A college friend invited me to Twitter, so I’m giving it a shot to see if it can help connect me to the broader world a bit more.

Only problem is that I don’t really know anyone who uses Twitter. I’ve started the account following some people I find interesting out in Mac Software/Design Land, but I’d love to find some like-minded web designers or folks involved in the Mac software scene (any taggers out there?). You can find me at twitter.com/onecrayon/; help me find some web developers and just generally cool people before I start twitching and talking to myself! (Well, okay, I’ve been talking to myself for years; but the twitching is a definite danger.)

This has nothing to do with tagging. However, for anyone out there who does web design and needs a text editor, skEdit version 4 has finally been released. skEdit is one of the best text editors available for Mac (along with TextMate), particularly for internet text editing. Its inline code completion and project-based editing (of local and remote files simultaneously, keeping them in sync) make it a very compelling text editor, particularly given its lower price point.

Although TextMate is a more powerful editor in some ways, skEdit’s learning curve is far shallower, and if you are editing HTML, PHP, CSS, and so forth then skEdit is an excellent choice. Definitely worth taking a look now that version 4 has finally gone live.

WebnoteHappy, probably the best of the Mac bookmark managers, and Booxter, an intriguing alternative to Delicious Library (with admittedly mediocre tag support), are offered as MacSanta featured items today December 8, 2007 only for 20% off with the coupon “MACSANTA07″. If you miss out, though, you’ll still be able to get them for 10% for the rest of December.

I definitely recommend trying out WebnoteHappy if you haven’t already. Although it has some limitations (like only supporting del.icio.us and not my favored Ma.gnolia), it’s still a very nicely designed piece of software with solid tagging support.

EagleFiler (and a bunch of other cool, non-tagging apps like SpamSieve and more) is available from MacSanta today December 2, 2007 only for 20% off. Although it will only be a featured deal today, if you miss it you’ll be able to pick it up for 10% off through the end of the MacSanta promotion (December 24th).

The MacSanta sale is definitely a good one to keep your eye on (because you don’t have enough places to spend money in December as is), and they provide an RSS feed for those who like to keep abreast of the latest featured deals.

This is completely off-topic, but I like a good read even more than I like a well-implemented file library (I know, it’s pretty crazy). Bill Cameron, a fellow Avenir user, is giving away five copies of his suspense novel, Lost Dog, in the Give a Dog a Home sweepstakes. Lost Dog is a great read; I’m not a big fan of suspense thrillers or crime/mystery novels (I picked it up because I knew Bill from the Avenir forums), but it was a single-sitting read for me and kept me up way past when I should have gone to bed. Definitely a worthwhile way to spend an evening. Or two, if you’re less obsessed than I.

So take a break from tagging those pesky files, head over to Bill’s website, suggest a name for his lost dog, and win yourself a great novel. Or lose and buy it anyway. Whatever works for you. And with that minor endorsement out of the way, I’ll see if I can’t write something pithy about tagging next.