The biggest misconception is that Together is some kind of replacement for the Finder. It really isn’t and to use it that way will only lead to disappointment somewhere down the line. Nor is Together intended to be a particularly strong notetaker and its editing capabilities only exist so you can pare the gathered information down to its bare essentials.

I realize I may be to blame here for using the word “everything” in the standard blurb. When I say “Together lets you keep everything in one place”, the “everything” means “any kind of file or data that can be taken from its source”, which is almost, but not quite the same as “anything”, a term that could be misleading. It continues and clarifies: “Text, documents, images, movies, sounds, web pages and bookmarks can all be dragged to Together for safe keeping, tagged, previewed, collected together in different ways and found again instantly.”

I wanted the app for myself, funnily enough, while I was learning to become a Cocoa developer and researching app ideas. I was collecting things like code snippets, tips, bookmarks, tutorial movies and screenshots, but noticed how much of a chore it was to copy and paste, choose filenames and create folders for all these things, let alone find them again. Inspiration came from Apple’s own iApps and two other apps in the Classic Mac OS. As I explained on this blog back in 2005:

I’ve always missed the Scrapbook and Note Pad apps that came with Mac OS 9 and earlier. Fast to load, always available – perfect. At the time, they did exactly what I wanted them to do. You could drag and drop (or cut and paste) text, graphics, QuickTime movies, sounds, or anything really to the Scrapbook and it would store it away for you. The Scrapbook app was always available in the stripy Apple menu and when you needed something from it, you could just drag it back out again.

It was the same with Note Pad, which actually did look like a notepad and was so cool in the way you could turn the pages. It was just so handy for jotting down those little bits of text when you don’t want to create a new document, save it and have to find it again later. I never thought Stickies would be an adequate replacement – it’s just not the same.

Together is really my take on these apps, with a modern twist. I shy away from emphasizing terms such as “research” or “organize” because that’s not exactly what the app is about. Yes, Together can be used for research and it can be used to organize information, but it’s really all about collecting that information effortlessly and finding it again, which includes both searching and previewing the files.

Of course, you could finally search and preview most kinds of files in Leopard, but that raises another important point. When Together (then called Keep It Together, or KIT) 1.0 was first released in 2004, there was no Spotlight or Quick Look, yet the app offered as-you-type content searching, smart groups for files and you didn’t need to open most files to see previews of them.

Also, because Together has always kept the original files and folders on disk there is no fear of lock-in and it works perfectly well with all the technologies Apple has introduced since its launch, such as Spotlight, Quick Look and Time Machine.

While the ability to search and preview files has improved enormously in Mac OS X over the last few years, people still have needs that exceed the capabilities of the system. In particular, the friction in collecting information remains. This is Together’s real strength and purpose today. Drag anything (that can be dragged!) to Together, and it’s saved. You don’t need to choose a file format, name files or even specify a destination; Together creates standard-format files that can be opened directly in any number of other applications. Mac OS X has clippings, but they seem to remain a hangover from the Classic Mac OS and don’t work well with apps or the system.

And that’s it, really. Together fulfills a need to effortlessly collect and find information and should be viewed as complementary to the Finder and your apps, never as a replacement.

The importer allows you to import notes from all or just a selection of your Evernote notebooks. Each notebook becomes a group in the current Together library and the notes will be converted into editable Together notes. The importer also preserves the tags, creation and modification dates and source URL of the originals. A link to this importer is below and can always be found on the Together downloads page.

Download: EvernoteImporter.zip

This has been one of our most requested episodes. We talk all about information managers. These are applications that handle all those random bits of information that don’t seem to fit in any other type of organizational system. We’ll give you a general overview of some of the options available on the Mac and Katie and David go more in depth on the systems we use.

It might be a common theme lately, but in this release I decided to avoid major new features and concentrate on tweaking and improving the app, while updating its underpinnings to keep pace with the latest technologies from Apple, something Together has strived to achieve from the outset. Together still needs to run on Leopard, so there’s only so far this can go at the moment, but it’s a start.

The last three 2.x releases have introduced many new features and, as a result, it’s clear Together meets the needs of most people now. I have some great ideas for the future, but this felt like a great time to give everything a once-over and generally polish the app as it stands. That said, it’s often the little touches that make people the most happy, so here are some of the highlights in Together 2.3:

Any-Size Icons

You can now freely resize icons in the items list from 16px in Landscape mode, or 32px in Portrait mode, anywhere up to 128px. As the size increases, so the name will wrap so you can see more of it. This can also be achieved with multi-touch gestures, should your Mac or mouse support it.

Additional Info in Portrait Mode

In Portrait mode, prior to this version, each row would show an item’s icon, name, rating, size, label color and an appropriate date (date modified, unless sorted by another date). Now you can choose to replace the rating with something else, such as the item’s kind, a list of tags, comments, or the label name. By default, Together shows the item’s kind unless the items are sorted by something else, but you can override this in the View Options panel.

Preview Zooming

Previously, only previews for notes, text documents and PDFs could be zoomed, but now web archives, bookmark web previews and Quick Look previews can be zoomed too. When zooming web content, Together will also do a full page zoom the same as Safari 4, rather than just make the text bigger. Previews can be also zoomed with the multitouch zoom gesture, provided you have appropriate hardware.

Shelf Improvements

The appearance of the Shelf has been revamped to include a lighter outline for better contrast against darker backgrounds. Additionally, you can now choose to show all groups or just favorite groups when dragging to the Shelf from other applications, the preview window zooms faster and you can open search results by pressing Enter without leaving the search field. Finally, there’s an option not to open the Shelf automatically when the tab is hidden and the mouse is moved to the side of the screen.

Snow Leopard Improvements

Together now includes preferences to enable Snow Leopard-specific technologies such as smart dashes, data detection, text replacement and automatic spelling correction. QuickTime X is now used for movie and sound playback, when possible, making loading movies more responsive. Quick Look on Leopard didn’t generate icon previews for web archives, but Snow Leopard does, which removes the need for Together to do that. Also on Snow Leopard, the Shelf will no longer be hidden when using Exposé to show the Desktop.

And More…

You can now open items in applications other than the default, bookmarks will automatically be converted to use the new format introduced by Apple that works on non-Mac filesystems, and therefore with online services such as Dropbox. Preferences have been cleaned up, and there are improvements to Smart Groups, searches, tag bundles and even Sparkle software updates. Together also includes a new “Search in Together” system service that can be used from any application. See the release notes for a full list of changes and to download this version.

Together 2.3 costs $39 and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

At the time of writing, it includes the wares of over 80 independent software developers, including Reinvented Software, but more are being added all the time. So, to get 20% off the full price of Together, Feeder or anything else you’ve been fancying on the list, then go to the One Finger Discount page to find out how.

You may notice that the Services menu has been cleaned up in Snow Leopard and this affects Together users. You can now choose which items to show and set shortcut keystrokes for the Services menu in System Preferences. Unlike the mess of before, Snow Leopard only shows the services that are relevant to the current selection.

An additional enhancement is that items in the Services menu now appear in contextual menus. This is intended to replace contextual menu plugins across the system, as those will not work with 64-bit applications.

Speaking of which, I plan to make both Feeder and Together 64-bit applications on their next major release (Feeder 2.1 and Together 2.3). Together will be released first and Feeder will follow. Feeder is much more reliant on a number of third-party components than Together, so that transition will take longer.

I plan to take advantage of more Snow Leopard technology in my apps in due course, while retaining Leopard compatibility for a while.

I’ve been using Snow Leopard for a while now and my favorite enhancement has got to be the improved Exposé, especially the way an app is put under the spotlight when dragging to its Dock icon. I think Snow Leopard is my favorite release of Mac OS X since 10.3 Panther. Big headline features are great, but a focus on thoughtful enhancements and improved performance always seems to make me smile.

So, if you’re installing it today, I’d like to wish you a happy Snow Leopard day!

New User Interface

Feeder 2.0 has been redesigned to make working with feeds easier from start to finish. The toolbar is now less cluttered and shows a typical workflow, while the contents of Feeder’s Info drawer, which manages attributes and settings that applied to the feed as a whole, has moved to the main window.

The drawer approach worked well in the initial versions of Feeder, but didn’t scale very well as support for more RSS extensions was added. For new users, the Info drawer could appear intimidating with its sometimes cramped layout and small text, despite most of it being entirely optional.

Now, clicking the Info button below the source list shows a list of RSS extensions and choosing one of these will show all the details for that extension that apply to the feed as a whole. There’s another section for Settings that works the same way, but for things not stored in the feed itself. To get back to editing items, click on the feed or hide the Info view. The new Info sections are also searchable, both for field names and their values.

Editing & Templates

Editing items in Feeder has been improved in a number of ways. HTML syntax coloring has been improved and Feeder will now only check the spelling of the actual content rather than any HTML tags. The Insert Image panel now uses CSS styles to align and add decoration to the image and you can drag and drop files to the description area to immediately upload them to the web and insert the appropriate HTML image or link tags.

Feeder’s templates are now much more accessible. Feeds are based on templates, which determine which RSS extensions should be used, which fields to show in the editor and can also contain default values for things such as an author name or boilerplate text for the description.

In Feeder 2.0 choosing a template is the first step in creating a new feed and the template editor, which was once a panel that was probably ignored by most people, is now integrated into the item editor. By clicking the Template button, the editor switches to Template mode where you will see a list of extensions and all the fields for the selected extension. Click the checkbox next to a field to show it in the editor and set default values in the field itself.

Preview

Feeder has always shown a preview of how your feed should look when viewed in a typical feed reader. Feeder 2.0 improves on this with the new portrait preview, which shows the list of items on the left and the preview to the right. This is how people will read posts on a web page and in most cases eliminates the need to scroll when checking your feed. The new preview style is much cleaner than before, too.

Post to Weblog

Many podcasters use Feeder to complement their existing weblog. Most blogging software has fairly limited support for podcasts, so Feeder gives full control over the feed, Apple’s iTunes RSS extensions and can automatically add the appropriate artwork and other ID3 (or equivalent) tags to media files before uploading everything to the web.

However, using Feeder in tandem with a blog was, at best, a clunky experience. You could post to the blog first, reload the blog’s feed in Feeder and drag the new post to your podcast feed, or publish with Feeder first, then manually copy the details into a blog post.

Either method has compromises. By posting to the blog first, you won’t be able to use Feeder to tag and upload the media files and the alternate approach is an exercise in cut and paste.

With Feeder 2.0, this problem is solved. You can create your episode in Feeder and in one click, upload the feed, media files and send the post to your blog. Feeder will also update posts that it has previously published. Feeder supports WordPress, Blogger and Drupal, the most popular weblogs for podcasters, but others should work too.

Announcements

Many people use Twitter and Facebook to announce new posts, so it seems fitting that Feeder should be able to do this for you too. After publishing, Feeder can post updates on Twitter and Facebook for the newly published content in your feed.

Amazon S3 Uploading

Amazon S3 is becoming a popular choice among those who want an affordable and dependable way to host large files. Feeder 2.0 now includes full support for publishing to Amazon S3 and working with S3 servers, including bucket and folder creation.

Share Panel

It can be difficult to know what to do with a feed after publishing it and this was not covered much in Feeder before. For example, most modern web browsers will auto-detect the presence of an RSS feed on a web page using a special HTML tag, but unless you know about that, you will be mystified.

In Feeder 2.0 things such as that are available in the Share panel, which Feeder can show after publishing a feed for the first time, and can be seen at any time by clicking the Share button in the toolbar.

And much more!

These are the highlights of the new features in Feeder 2.0 but just about every part of the app has been tweaked, polished and modernized. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

Feeder 2.0 requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later and costs $39. Feeder 1.x users can upgrade for $14.95 and anyone who purchased Feeder in the last 6 months qualifies for a free upgrade.

The Hit List is, as the name suggests, based around lists. You can create separate lists for each set of tasks you need to manage, whether a work project, plan for a trip or anything, really. There are also some special lists such as Inbox, for collecting tasks, and Today and Upcoming to keep track of tasks, and you can create smart folders too. Lists are in outline form, a perfect way to organize your thoughts, with each task an item in the list. Tasks can have start and due dates, estimated times, tags, notes and attachments and can be organized into folders.

For me, what makes The Hit List stand out is how straightforward it is to use. Hit Return to create a task, and start typing. Tags are inline, prefixed by the / character, and appear as highlighted text. Context tags start with the @ character. The Hit List can also predict tags as you type.

Typing is a big part of The Hit List, and almost everything to do with creating and working with tasks can be accomplished with a number of single-character shortcut keys, such as T for today or F to file tasks. And if you’re wondering how you would ever remember all this, a Hints bar is shown along the bottom of the list and changes depending on the context. Of course, you can accomplish everything with the mouse too.

Add to this the tabbed interface, a tag browser, where tags can be organized into bundles, a contextual tag filter and cleverly implemented iCal sync and this app appears to want for nothing. Well, apart from an iPhone version, which is planned. And that’s the amazing thing: this app is feature packed, but to just look at it, you would never realize. The Hit List strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and power.

While public preview continues, you do not need a license to buy The Hit List, but at the time of writing, you can for a special price of $49.95. The normal price will be $69.95. The Hit List requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Normally, I only write about Mac software I’ve had the opportunity to beta test, but with The Hit List, while that is true, the story is somewhat different. Potion Factory developer Andy Kim is a very good friend of mine, and I have watched him sculpt this application for well over a year now. I know and appreciate the time and effort he has invested in every detail, and I have looked forward to the day when he shows it to the world.

Congratulations to Andy on this release and if you’re interested in a task management application that doesn’t leave you dumbfounded, check out The Hit List from Potion Factory without delay.

Link: The Hit List Public Preview

To give a practical example, OmniFocus’s Clipping feature allows you to set a keystroke that can be used to import the current selection into OmniFocus. For most applications, it achieves this using the Services menu.

As of Together 2.2.4, when an item is selected in Together and OmniFocus’s clipping service is used, whether through the keystroke or Services menu, OmniFocus will create a new task with the Together item link in the tasks’s notes. Clicking the item link will open the original item in a tab in Together.

As I mentioned, this is using Mac OS X’s system services, it’s not an OmniFocus-only tip, so you may be able to find a use for this in other apps, too.

Today, the promotion is back for another fortnight. While the recipe is the same, you can now choose from around 70 apps from independent developers across the globe. Together is included in this promotion. Discounts start at 20% when you buy three or more apps and rise to 50% for five or more apps. The promotion runs from Nov 17th to Nov 30th.

So, to create your own bargain bundle, head over to the Give Good Food to your Mac store.