Tags 2.0 requires 10.6 and is a free update for licensed users of Tags 1.0 (although you do have to manually choose to register it, as they have added a one-time activation over the internet). Although I’m unsure if Tags still has a place in my personal workflow, this is definitely an update worthy of attention if you’ve been looking for a tagging solution for your Snow Leopard machine that’s a bit simpler to use than Leap. For slightly more info about the update, see the 2.0 release announcement.

Particularly if you were disappointed at Punakea’s switch from free beta software to paid shareware, this is a good opportunity to get it at a reduced price. Punakea is a handy “tag and quick search” app in the vein of Tags or TagIt / Fresh.

For the full story, see the Hazel release notes.

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.

Tags is compatible with OpenMeta tagging apps like Leap, Default Folder X, or the newly released Punakea and is my favorite solution for tagging files after the fact (Default Folder X being the best option for tagging them as you first save them). Of course, you should be aware of the downsides to OpenMeta; as powerful as Tags and similar programs are, they aren’t something you should use without being aware of how they’re accomplishing their magic.

For more information about Punakea’s 1.0 release and subsequent move from free to shareware, see the blog posts on the first 1.0 release candidate, final pricing, and the 1.0 announcement. Release notes are also available.

Leap 2 is available for $59 with a 10 day demo, or $19 for owners of Leap 1 (to get the upgrade price, install Leap 2, launch it, and click the “Upgrade Now…” button for instructions). For more information, see the release notes.

I highly recommend Default Folder X even if you have no interest in OpenMeta (it’s a fantastic utility), but this release is basically a must-have for anyone trying to setup an OpenMeta-driven tagging system. For more details about the release, see the Default Folder X release notes.

For more information, see the Tag Folders release notes, MarsEdit 2.3 blog announcement, EagleFiler 1.4.5 blog announcement, and the Evernote 1.3 Mac blog announcement. Tags does not currently have up-to-date release notes online.

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

Fresh is one of those fantastic pieces of software that targets a common problem (“where the heck is that file I was just working on?”) and provides a simple, elegant solution that you can start using within seconds of downloading the program. Even if you’re uninterested in the tagging features (which I admit I’m personally unlikely to use; I prefer Tags), Fresh is an application that will slip easily into your workflow, likely making you wonder after a day or two how you ever lived without. Fresh offers a 21 day free trial, and costs $9 to register.

This turns out to be only half the story, however, and should you be a developer or user considering OpenMeta (or Tags) as a solution for your tagging needs you need to use it with eyes open. Although the technology OpenMeta uses is completely on the level, the way in which it achieves instant Spotlight availability is based on exploiting Spotlight’s preferential treatment of metadata that is identified as coming from Apple. This doesn’t mean that you should swear off OpenMeta and Tags (I’m still using them), but before you go tag-crazy you definitely need to consider the risks.

How does it do that?!

OpenMeta uses a technology called extended attributes to store and retrieve tags. Extended attributes (or xattr as they are often referred to by those in love with tech-speak) are a way for third parties or users themselves to add arbitrary metadata to files. Using extended attributes for tagging is entirely legitimate; the reason that they haven’t been used for generic tagging software before is that extended attributes are not indexed by Spotlight unless the program creating them registers them via a Spotlight importer, which means that the only program that will know about the special tagging extended attribute will be the program that created the tag.

Unfortunately, any given file can only have one Spotlight importer, which is usually the program that created the file. Clearly it isn’t feasible for a piece of tagging software to convince all the various developers whose files might be tagged to add support for their tags in their importers, so the typical route for adding information to the Spotlight index is out. (Thanks to Michael Tsai for clarifying this for me.)

OpenMeta gets around the Spotlight problem by identifying its tag attribute as coming from Apple. Spotlight automatically indexes extended attributes placed in the Apple namespace, and OpenMeta exploits this by quietly writing its tags into that namespace.

This is a problem because Apple doesn’t support other programs writing information to their namespace (the expected and sanctioned behavior is for programs to create their own unique namespace). Since Apple doesn’t support it, OpenMeta may or may not continue to work the way that it does now with subsequent updates to the operating system, and tag data may or may not be preserved.

OpenMeta (although possibly not Tags) does take steps to ensure that your information is backed up. In the event of extended attributes getting wiped for a file (which can occasionally happen if other programs are buggy in their use of extended attributes), OpenMeta stores backups of your tags in your Library folder. This, however, does not address the problem that OpenMeta is injecting information into an area that is reserved for Apple’s use.

So should I use OpenMeta?

Whether you should use OpenMeta is a question both developers and users should ask themselves before blindly adopting the technology. On the one hand, it has significant benefits and at long last offers a standardized way for programs to share tagging information with one another and the system without relying on Spotlight comments. On the other, the program is exploiting unsupported aspects of the operating system and can thus offer no promises about its future viability.

Michael Tsai of EagleFiler fame is the first developer I know of to have been willing to frankly discuss the downsides and specifics of OpenMeta’s implementation, and over the course of a long and wending forum discussion he recommends that OpenMeta change its focus from storing tags in an Apple namespace to storing tags in an OpenMeta-specific namespace available to all tagging programs with duplicate storage in the Apple namespace offered as an option for those to whom Spotlight integration is worth the potential downsides. For developers, I agree with Michael. Were I developing an app of my own that used tagging, I would be leery of relying on a framework that forced me to write to an unsupported namespace with no alternative, supported method for data storage.

For users the question of whether or not to use OpenMeta or Tags is more a matter of personal needs and preferences. If their functionality feels as much like magic to you as it does to me and you’re comfortable with using technology that isn’t officially supported by Apple, then by all means tag away. If you are using tags in a mission critical environment, you may want to think carefully about whether OpenMeta is for you but for most users the risk of data loss is extremely low.

Although I haven’t created a full-fledged system yet, I’ve slowly been developing a use for Tags which uses tags as supplemental information, pairing it with Hazel where I can to enable automatic sorting of tagged files into my standard folder hierarchy. I wouldn’t recommend using OpenMeta to try and replace a folder structure, but by utilizing it to add information I can have a richer store of metadata without being hamstrung if an OS update for some reason broke OpenMeta.

Whether OpenMeta will work for you or not should be based not just upon how great the product seems but also how comfortable you are with the methods being used behind the scenes.

My hope is that as OpenMeta and Tags gain traction, Apple will finally take note and address the problem of third party extended attributes having no way to get into the Spotlight index. Whether that happens or not, however, is impossible to predict; time will tell if OpenMeta is ahead of the curve or if it will ultimately go the route of SpotMeta.

For more information about the specifics of how OpenMeta does its thing, I highly recommend reading some of Michael Tsai’s posts in the aforementioned Ironic Software forum discussion. Although the thread ranges pretty far afield, some of the early information offers a very specific look at what OpenMeta is doing, and there are some interesting suggestions for alternative ways the software could go about achieving its various goals.

Unfortunately, the release notes don’t appear to be published anywhere online, but you can find them if you run the auto-update for the software (assuming you have it installed). If it’s not already on your computer, then now is as good a time as any to try it out.

The best news, however, is that besides being beautiful and so easy to use my tech-challenged grandmother could probably figure it out, Tags doesn’t use Spotlight comments or any other such hackery to accomplish its tagging. It instead uses extended attributes in a way that is compatible (or possibly identical) with OpenMeta, the open source tagging framework recently released by Ironic Software and incorporated into their photo tag browser Deep. For anyone who has been frustrated with the numerous limitations of Spotlight comment tagging, this is fantastic news indeed. Tags is available as a free trial from the Tags website, and when you’re ready to buy is priced at $29.

For more information on the various updates see Together’s release notes, Hazel’s release notes, the StoryMill 3.2.1 announcement, and the Evernote synchronization blog announcement.

The awesomeness of Deep does come at a cost, however: Deep not only requires Leopard, but is Intel-only. It will not run on PowerPCs. Deep is available for $34 or as part of a package deal with Yep and Leap for $69, and the application includes a 21 day free trial. Definitely check out the manual for some very useful tips and tricks on using the software; although Deep is simple enough to pick up and use immediately (or almost immediately, given the need to index the colors of the images on your hard drive), there’s definitely more to the program than meets the eye.

For more information about EagleFiler 1.4.3 see the release notes. Default Folder X includes information on what’s new on the Default Folder X download page.

For more information, see the Hazel release notes, EagleFiler’s 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 blog posts, or PackRat’s 1.7.5 blog announcement.

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.

For more information about the updates see the Default Folder X release notes, Together release notes, or Pukka 1.7 announcement.