Together 2.2 is available today, bringing improvements to tagging, groups, item categorization, tabs, the Shelf, imports and previews. Here’s a summary of the main changes:

Tagging

Together 2.2 introduces intelligent auto-tagging based on items with similar content. When items are imported or saved, Together will analyse their content and tag them based on other items with the same tag.

Also in 2.2, tags can be organized into bundles, and system tags (which show things such as labels, ratings and groups as though they were tags) are also shown in their own bundles. It’s now possible to show items that have all the selected tags in the tag browser, rather than any of the tags.

The new Change Tags panel replaces the Add Tags panel to add or remove specific tags from multiple items or all items in a group. This is useful as is not possible to edit specific tags in the Info view when multiple items are selected and not all items have the same tags.

Items

Together 2.2 adds a new Web Page group to show all web archives, web pages and PDFs of web pages, whether printed from a browser or web PDFs created by Together.

Items’ file creation and modification dates can be edited in the Info view by clicking on the date.

Tabs for items can now be rearranged and will scroll horizontally when there are too many to be displayed in the main window.

Web PDFs have also been improved so that you can specify the minimum size for a web page when creating a PDF in Together, with default settings in Together’s Previews preferences panel that will be used when PDFs are imported from dragged URLs.

Also, the content for notes and text documents can now be zoomed and the default zoom percentage can be set in Previews preferences.

Groups

Groups and smart groups can now be nested in folders. Items can be added to new or existings groups and moved to folders using the Items menu.

Shelf

Together 2.1 added the ability for the Shelf to show options when importing. This is now improved so that, in the case of single-item imports, you can edit the name of the item being imported.

Also, Together will return to the previous application after the Shelf closes and there is a new “Find in Library” hot key to open the Shelf with the search field selected.

Importing

Together now has better handling of file promises. Sometimes when dragging from other applications, the other application is responsibile for creating the file in Together’s library, but Together would only know when that process started and so would show the new item in the library before the copy had completed. This could cause some confusion for larger files, so now Together will wait until the file has been fully copied to a temporary location.

This change also works around a problem where Mail.app will silently overwrite exported email files with the same subject, as Together now has control over the name of the imported file.

There are plenty of other smaller improvements and tweaks in this version. See the Together release notes page for a full list.

I’m occasionally asked if I can compare Together with its competitors or the approaches of similar applications. For all sorts of reasons, I doubt I’m the right person to ask for an opinion. However, a rummage through this web site’s referral logs revealed some interesting comparisons that have been posted recently:

• Yojimbo vs Together vs Evernote: a review by Rachel Murphy, whose blog includes a number of thoughtful posts on Mac software.
• 8 Web Information Collectors Reviewed by Daniel Jomphe covers DEVONthink Personal, EagleFiler, Journler, Circus Ponies Notebook, Scrivener, SOHO Notes, Together and Yojimbo.
• Solving Mac Information Management: Yojimbo, Journler, Together, VoodooPad, EagleFiler, WikityWidget, Punakea, Leap on NOT a blog
• UX Magazine – Review: Mac Information Managers quickly compares Yojimbo, Soho Notes and Together.

A number of these point out that it’s your needs that count, and that is a crucial point. All apps have their place as they can offer something unique; any app that tries to be all things to all people is going to be a disappointment.

Fortunately you can download and try all these apps for yourself. That said, with so much choice, blog posts like the above, written by real users, can be a great starting point.

Together has always been pretty capable in its support for importing all sorts of things, through the Shelf, Dock icon and system services. Together 2.1 adds three new ways to import links and files.

Automatic File Import

Together can now automatically import files saved in its library folders, meaning you can save files directly to Together’s folders without having to manually import them. This can be enabled by checking “Auto import files added to Library folders” in Import preferences and it’s on by default.

For documents to be imported, you can save them anywhere in Together’s library folders apart from the Support and Trash folders. Together may move the document if it’s in the wrong page (e.g. a text document in the Images folder).

This will probably remove most people’s need for specific watched folders, but that method is still possible and may be useful too.

Import Hot Key

Together 2.1 also adds support for a global import hot key, which can also be set in Together’s Import preferences.

When the hot key is pressed, links or files will be imported according to Together’s Import preferences. This will work with most web browsers, Mail, Microsoft Entourage and NetNewsWire and the Finder.

Bookmarklets

A popular request was for Together to have support for bookmarklets, so web pages can be saved to Together with a single click, so this is now available in 2.1.

You can install the bookmarklets in your browser by clicking the Bookmarklets button in Together’s Import preferences. There are three different bookmarklets to save the current page as a bookmark, web archive or web PDF.

Updated October 1, 2008 to reflect changes to Together and MobileMe (formerly .Mac) since version 2.1.

Together can now sync with MobileMe. Syncing can be enabled for a library by checking “Sync Library with MobileMe” in the Library Manager panel (choose Together > Library Manager from the menu).

A synced library will merge with all other synced libraries, therefore only one Together library can be synced per Mac. Syncs will be performed according to your settings in the MobileMe System Preferences panel.

Files that are linked (i.e. the original file exists outside of Together’s library) on a local Mac will be saved as copies in the LIbrary on a remote Macs.

Most other things that are synced to MobileMe with Apple’s Sync Services are small pieces of information such a bookmarks and iCal events, rather than whole files. It works, but there are some things to watch out for:

• You need enough free space on your iDisk to accommodate your library, with spare capacity for tracking changes. You can find out the size of your library by selecting all items in the Library group. The total size will be shown in the Info view.
• Due to the way Sync Services works, Together’s memory usage will temporarily swell by the size of your library while syncing and later on, one of the processes used during syncing (dotmacsyncclient) will temporarily consume memory that 3x the size of your library. Therefore, I would recommended not syncing a library if it is greater than about 20% of the memory installed on your Mac. So, for a Mac with 2GB installed, 400MB would be the limit.
• Large files are also unsuitable for syncing. If you have files in your library that are more than a few megabytes in size, it’s possible syncing will crash Together.
• Finally, if you have a large library, the sync status icon in the menu bar will stop spinning after 10 minutes even though the upload could still be in progress. A process called dotmacsyncclient is responsible for sending the changes to your iDisk and you can see whether this is still running in the Activity Monitor app.

Here’s a rough guide of how long it might take to perform the first sync:

Future syncs will be faster as they’ll only deal with the files that have changed.

Together 2.1 is released today. This is a large update that includes the most-wanted feature requests following version 2.0, along with some great new features to help make Together easier and more useful. You can download the latest version here.

Sync, AppleScript, Web PDFs

Together can now sync its library with .Mac, includes AppleScript support and a new way of saving web pages – as PDFs that look identical to the original page, with background images, clickable links and no pagination.

Shelf Improvements

The Shelf has seen a number of improvements, including a new Favorites section, where you can drag groups and items from Together’s library for quick access, Quick Look previews, so you don’t need to go back to Together to see the content of a file, the ability to tag and group Quick Notes and the option to hide the Shelf tab, so it will open when the mouse moves to the edge of the screen.

Organizing

Smart groups become more useful with the ability to only search specified groups instead of the entire library. With group tagging, Together can automatically tag items added to groups and you can now copy or drag clickable links to Together items to other applications.

Import

Together’s import features have been extended considerably. For starters, Together can now automatically import any files saved in its library folders. There is a new global Import Hot Key for importing files from the Finder, URLs from web browsers and email messages, and there are now bookmarklets for Together, so saving a web archive, PDF or bookmark from your web browser is one click away.

For further integration with Spotlight and other applications, Together can now import files’ Spotlight comments and keywords as tags and export items’ Together tags back to the original files’ Spotlight comments in the Finder.

Library and Previews

Together’s user interface is now more customizable, with a choice of icons sizes for items and groups and preferences for the various different previews. Together can now also generate thumbnail icons for web archives and bookmarks.

The Portrait-orientation Info view has been improved so you can see an item’s basic information and its tags, comments, or groups at the same time and the tag browser now has options for which system tags to show.

These are just a selection of more than 60 new features and improvements in this version. The Release Notes page tells the full story and I will be posting more information about these new features over the next few days.