For more information, see the Yojimbo release notes, EagleFiler blog announcement, Together release notes, and MarsEdit blog announcement.

For full details, see the release notes.

Unfortunately, there’s currently a bug that prevents you from using those two last features together, but regardless the program is much more useable now, and I highly recommend you take a look if you need to store code or text snippets. Full information about the release is available in the release notes.

For the full story, see the Hazel release notes.

Snippet definitely is a 1.0, though. There are no menus to speak of and some of the user interactions are anything but intuitive, so before you use it you’ll want to check out the Help documentation on the Snippet website to brush up on the keyboard shortcuts. Additionally, there is also no way yet to paste your snippet directly into the frontmost app; you’ll have to copy it to your clipboard and then paste it into the app. However, despite these downsides Snippet is certainly an interesting and polished-looking offering that’s worth trying out if you’ve ever had problems synchronizing frequently-used code between multiple computers.

For more details, see the release notes. Unfortunately, it looks like a major version increase for Code Collector is unlikely to happen in the near future.

Aside from its extremely pleasant interface, Fontcase offers a surprisingly wide spread of features for a 1.0 release, including importing smart groups and so forth from Linotype’s FontExplorer X, local network sharing of fonts, the ability to print font previews, and more. Although the lack of any sort of Adobe plugins for auto font activation may make the program less appealing for true power users, Fontcase is a very appealing option to those like myself who need a better tool than Font Book but aren’t interested in spending an arm and a leg. Fontcase is available for a 14 day trial, and costs €35 / $46, with family and business packs available as well.

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 full details, check out the release notes.

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 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.

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.

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.

For slightly more information, check out the blog announcement.

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

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

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.

For more information and to download, visit the MailTags 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.