Together 2.6 is now available. This version includes an updated design, Retina graphics, improvements for working with linked files, email indexing and more and prepares the app for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

User Interface

With the introduction of Retina displays and OS X 10.8 on the horizon, the time felt perfect to update Together’s user interface.

Lion softened the look of buttons in the toolbar and with the majority of Together users now using Lion, Together’s toolbar now takes advantage of that style.

The status bar has been removed, with layout and info buttons from the status bar now in the toolbar. The source list on the left gets its own function bar below and buttons to switch between groups and tags above.

Most of the individual preview toolbars have also been removed, and the ones that remain (for bookmarks and web archives) have been simplified. New optional toolbar items are provided to serve the most common functions, such as showing the fonts panel and highlighting text.

All these changes provide more room for content and make more use of the underused toolbar.

In addition, the new Labels toolbar item can now apply the last used label to selected items and there’s a new item in the Items > Labels menu with a shortcut key to do that too.

Also, the groups list now comes in three sizes, and the File and Items menus have been simplified.

Linked Files

Together doesn’t require you to store your files in its library, it can link to files in other locations. In version 2.6, the app can now also rename the original files when you rename items in Together.

Another new feature offer the reverse functionality: when you move items to Together’s library, you can also choose to make aliases in the original locations. This feature also works for folders.

Other Changes

Normally Together uses Spotlight to search the contents of files, but issues with Spotlight and email messages require Together does its own indexing. Performance and memory use when indexing email files has improved considerably in Together 2.6.

Also, the Shelf can now be resized from all sides, support for the discontinued MobileMe sync service has been removed and the app icon has changed colors.

To see a full list of changes in Together 2.6 and to download a 15-day trial of the latest version, see the Together release notes page.

Version 2.6 is a free upgrade for all registered Together 2.x users. A full license costs $39.95 and upgrades from KIT 1.x are $14.95. Education and bulk discounts are also available through this site.

MobileMe is shutting down. If you host a podcast there you will need to move it soon. Here are the things you will need to do:

• Find a new place to host your web site and / or media files.
• Change Feeder’s settings and upload the files to the new location.
• If your feed URL has changed, tell iTunes to check the new location.

Hosting

You will need to get some kind of web hosting with enough storage space to host your files and providing enough bandwidth for your needs. You can see how much storage space you need by looking at how much is used by your podcast files on your iDisk in the Finder. To find out how much bandwidth you have been using each month, look at the Summary section on http://www.me.com. Click “Details” next to the Data Transfer figure for a full breakdown.

Most podcasters either use general-purpose web hosting (e.g. GoDaddy or Dreamhost) alone or a hosted weblog (such as one from wordpress.com or Google’s Blogger) in conjunction with something like Amazon S3 or Libsyn to serve the media files, or some combination of those.

Feeder has the ability to publish feeds and enclosures to different servers and can also post to most blogs automatically, so you can choose the solution that best suits your needs.

Changing Feeder’s Settings

Before changing the settings for your feed, first make a copy of it.

• To duplicate a feed, select it and choose File > Duplicate from the menu.
• If you like, you can change the name of the feed in the sidebar to show which is which. This name only appears in Feeder and not the feed itself.

To change the settings:

• Click Publish, then click the Settings button.
• From the Server pop-up menu, choose New Server to create a new server to use when publishing.
• Adjust the other details as necessary. The top section of the settings concerns the feed itself and you can expand the Enclosure and Images sections to change the settings for those too.

When you are done, publish the feed to make sure it all works. You may see an alert to submit your feed to the iTunes Store. You do not need to submit it again, but unless iTunes is using a FeedBurner URL, you will need to follow the instructions below to change the feed’s URL in iTunes after you have completed the other steps.

The next step is to upload the media files to the new server. Start with your artwork:

• Click the (i) button in the lower left of the window to show the Info list.
• Select “iTunes Podcasting” from the list (“Feed” must be selected above the list).
• Click on the artwork and choose “Upload Settings” from the menu, then check the “Upload Next Time Feed Published” checkbox. The Upload Settings option will not be available if the artwork file can no longer be found. Drag the artwork from your iDisk to the artwork box instead.
• Publish your feed.

Next you will need to upload your media files again. It is up to you to decide whether to upload only the most recent files or all of them:

• Double-click each item to edit.
• Check the Upload checkbox in the Enclosure section. If you do not see a checkbox, the enclosure file will no longer associated with the item and you will only see the URL, Type and Length fields. Drag the file from your iDisk to the Enclosure section to attach it again.
• Close the window and choose to save the changes.
• Publish your feed.

Updating iTunes

If the server move means that your feed’s URL will change, you need to tell the iTunes Store and subscribers to check the new URL. You can do this by publishing the original feed one more time with its New Feed URL field filled out.

Note you do not need to do this if you are using FeedBurner to track your podcast, instead you will need to tell FeedBurner to use the new URL in your feed’s settings there. You can get that URL by choosing File > Copy Feed URL from the menu.

To set the New Feed URL:

• With your newly published feed selected, choose File > Copy Feed URL from the menu.
• Select the original feed that you duplicated earlier.
• Go to the “iTunes Podcasting” section in the Info list again.
• Scroll down to the very bottom and paste the URL into the New Feed URL field.
• Publish the feed.

The iTunes Store checks your feed every day or so and new subscriptions will use the new settings straight away. Existing subscribers will switch to using the new feed the next time their feeds are refreshed.

Feeder 2.3 is now available. This version improves sharing on Twitter and Facebook, adds capabilities for working with online iTunes podcast artwork, allows automatic reordering of items and more.

Sharing

Since its release, Feeder 2 has been able to send updates to Twitter and Facebook automatically after publishing, or manually on demand. Version 2.3 makes this feature more accessible by placing a new Share item in the toolbar. Also the “Post to Twitter” and “Post to Facebook” menu items have been improved to show the account name being used. Apple has already announced that OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will add global sharing services for sending things to Twitter, Flickr and so on. In future, the Share menu will support those too.

Posting to Facebook has been updated to handle expiring authorization, which will require you to reauthorzie Feeder to post to Facebook every few months for new accounts. Feeder will make it clear when this needs to be done.

As of this release, URLs sent to Twitter are now always considered to be the length of its t.co shortened URLs as, since last November, all URLs are wrapped in this way regardless of whether a URL shortener is already used. This negates the need to use your own URL shortener unless you require statistics or other such information.

iTunes Podcasting

Apple recently announced an increase in the recommended size of iTunes artwork to 1200 pixels square, which Feeder now supports, and online artwork files for individual podcast episodes.

Previously episode artwork could only be embedded in the file itself, if possiblem but Apple TV is now able to show per-episode artwork without needing to download the audio or video files. Feeder now supports this, and using it is a simple as dragging artwork to the artwork box and it will be uploaded when the feed is published.

And More…

This version can also reorder all the items in a feed automatically by title or publication date date and includes the ability to move linked feed files to your Feeder library. See the Feeder downloads page for a full list of changes.

Feeder 2.3 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later and is a free upgrade for all registered Feeder 2.x users. A 15-day trial version is available for download from this site. A full license is $39.95 and upgrades from version 1.x are $14.95. Bulk and education discounts are also available. Feeder is also available from the Mac App Store.

Poster is now available exclusively on the Mac App Store. There is still a 15-day demo available to download from this site, but it cannot be activated with a registration code and will not run after the demo period expires. Existing users have been transitioned to the Mac App Store version.

As my newest app, Poster was released a month or so before the Mac App Store went live. So few licenses have been sold through my site that it is not worth maintaining two versions of the app.

Also, unlike my other apps, Poster has never had educational or bulk discounts, and since the Mac App Store gained promo codes, I haven’t needed to worry about NFR licenses either. Now the Mac App Store is available worldwide, it’s my hope that making this transition will not inconvenience anyone.

Poster 1.2 is available both on this site and the Mac App Store today. This version gets an updated user interface design, improvements when posting to Facebook and SmugMug and the ability to export faces from iPhoto and Aperture. Poster on the Mac App Store is now a sandboxed application on 10.7 and later.

SmugMug

On SmugMug, Poster now supports using subcategories and allows the creation of user categories and subcategories when creating galleries. Poster now also supports uploading images to SmugVault, if your account has that enabled, so rather than be restricted to just JPEG, PNG and GIF files, just about any image format can be uploaded and will be recognized on SmugMug’s servers as belonging to your SmugVault.

Facebook

For Facebook, it’s now possible to use friend lists such as “Close Friends” when posting to personal accounts. Poster will show all the lists associated with your account once you give it permission to access those lists. You’ll be prompted for this next time you create a new upload. Poster can also post videos to pages, now that Facebook has made this possible.

Flickr

There are no visible changes for Flickr, but all the communication with Flickr’s servers has been changed to use OAuth instead of Flickr’s own authentication scheme. In practice this shouldn’t make any difference apart from when you authorize Poster on Flickr in a web browser, you will return to the app automatically. Flickr is moving to using OAuth authentication exclusively from June, so this ensures Poster will continue to work after then.

Plug-ins

Poster has export plug-ins for iPhoto and Aperture which can be downloaded separately. These have been updated to export faces from your photos when you’re posting to Flickr or Facebook (SmugMug doesn’t support tagging people in photos). The plug-ins have also been updated to work with the sandboxed version of Poster on the Mac App Store, so you need the latest versions if you are running that version.

And More…

There are many more minor new features and improvements in Poster 1.2, see the release notes for a full list. Poster is available from this site or the Mac App Store and requires Mac OS X 10.6 and later. A 15-day trial is available on the Poster Downloads page. Poster costs $19.95.