I’m a Mac fanatic. You already know that, though. I’m definitely a power user but not all of the time. What I love is when an application comes along that equally serves a niche and is more than suitable for use by casual users. Today I’m going to talk about
two Mac apps that I’ve recently discovered that truly work together to make a great team: Punakea and Stuf (with one F).
If you own a Mac then you’re using the Finder. But doesn’t it start to become a pain when you start to accumulate documents like resumes, homework, graphics, PDFs, and countless others? No? Well is it not a pain to have to constantly reorganize your Finder in folders and subfolders in order to tame the unruly mess that inevitable becomes your digital life?
It does. This is where Punakea comes in. Apple designed the gr
eatest OS on the planet but it isn’t perfect. Once you have your cavern of nested folders its hard to find what you want to open quickly. The Finder’s search is great and so is Spotlight but what Apple left out was the ability to easily tag documents.
Punakea browser window
Punakea is a tiny little app that sits in your dock and menu bar waiting for files to be added. It
also features a window that slides out when you move your mouse to the edge of the screen for easy adding of files. Either drop your files into the open Punakea window or drag it to the side of the screen to add files to your library. A window pops up, you add your tags, press OK and you’re back to work. You can either let Punakea manage the location of all your files or you can simply use it to just add tags and leave the files where they are.
Personally I think its useless to have tags if you’re just going to use whatever folder organization scheme you already have. One great feature of Punakea is its Drop Box. Once enabled you can specify a folder that acts as a holding center for files. The files you put in the Drop Box are automatically tagged with the tags you specify in Punakea’s preferences. I use the tag “untagged” and when I’m ready to tag them I search Punakea for “untagged”. Once you tag your Drop Box files they are automatically moved by Punakea (unless you disable automatic file management). You can either search for your files by their tags from within Punakea or Spotlight/the Finder’s search. Punakea is free and I believe it still will be after it is out of beta. Every now and then a bug pops up but this app works great 99% of the time and I am very confident that the 1.0 release will blow you away. Check it out at the Nudge:Nudge website.
Another app that I use in conjunction with Punakea is Stuf. Stuf is made by the Escapers. Right now they have a really awesome web editor, Flux, that I’m testing out. I may just use instead of Coda or Espresso. I’ll review Flux next week. Stuf is a clipboard manager. Whenever I’m usi
ng the computer I end up copying and pasting a lot of stuff. Its always different kinds of stuff too. And inevitably I end up having to use it over and over. Sometimes I end up copying something else and lose the first thing I wanted to copy and past. At that point I need to go back online or in whatever program to find it and do it all over again. Stuf saves you from that. Stuf allows you to copy as much to the clipboard as your computer can handle. It even lets you organize that stuff into categories. Never again will you copy and past something into an email and then have to find it all over again to do the same in a chat room or while instant messaging. Stuf is a godsend for programmers like me who end up using code, graphics, text, links, etc. over and over again. Your web editor may have a clipboard that does this but I promise you that it pales in comparison to Stuf. Once you try it you’ll want to buy it and never give it up. Stuf costs 12 British Pounds pretty much equal to around $20. You can demo it by visiting the Escapers website. I highly recommend it.
Stuf - Screenshot
