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.

Feeder 1.5.5 includes chages for Apple’s transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Generated URLs for new files published to your iDisk will now use a me.com rather than mac.com address, unless they are stored in the Sites folder (relating to http://homepage.mac.com), as it appears these will not change for MobileMe. Feeds and enclosures published to mac.com addresses will continue to work and do not need to be changed.

Konrad Lawson at The AppleScript Studio Workshop has written a comprehensive tutorial about including Sparkle for automatic software updates in an AppleScript Studio project. The tutorial also mentions Feeder as a way to create the appcast feed:

Link: The AppleScript Studio Workshop - Adding a Check Updates Feature

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.

Together can now sync with .Mac. When you first launch version 2.1, it will ask if you want to enable syncing, or you can enable it at any time in the Library Manager (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.

By default, Together will sync automatically a short while after you’ve made changes. If you prefer, you can choose to sync manually in the Library Manager and then choose Together > Sync Now from the menu when you want to sync.

Together actually syncs with your local sync database. The changes will be uploaded to .Mac according to your settings in .Mac System Preferences.

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 .Mac 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 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:

Upload speed: 386 Kbps (47 Kilobytes/sec)
Library size: 100 megabytes
Upload time: 36 minutes

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