The Mac Power Users podcast recently covered information managers, including Together: MPU 016: Information Managers.

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.

Together 2.3 is available today. This version brings improvements to just about every part of the application including previews, resizable icons, search, tags and the Shelf, along with support for Snow Leopard-specific technologies such as gesture-based zooming, text replacement and automatic spelling correction. Also, Together now runs as a 64-bit application on Snow Leopard.

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.

One Finger Discount is a promotion inspired by the current MacHeist nanoBundle that is running for the rest of the week, offering a discount of 20%, or one fifth, the full price of the software. It is being run by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, developer of MarsEdit and more.

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.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is publicly available today. Both current releases of Feeder (2.0.5) and Together (2.2.11) are fully compatible. If you are installing Snow Leopard, please ensure you are using these versions, which can be downloaded through the Sparkle automatic update system built into the apps, or from their respective product pages.

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!

Together 2.2.4 introduces a very small, but potentially quite useful feature addition following a feature request. You can now send a Together item link for the selected item in the list (or the item in the current tab) to another application using the Services menu.

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.