Application Review: Punakea

Punakea: A tagging app for OS X.

Punakea is a little app trying to help you cope with the day-to-day struggle of managing your files. Designed to complement Spotlight, it allows you to tag your files and bookmarks, freeing you of the strict hierarchy of the Finder's folder structure.

I've tried a few different tagging apps for OS X. Tags was kind of a disappointment because, at the time, I was looking for an app that would allow me to tag my emails as well and Tags just didn't work right. I've tried out Tagbot but they seriously restrict the number of tags you can use in the demo so it wasn't really good for a full-review. I've seen a number of Automator / Applescript solutions using Spotlight comments but this was a bit too manual for me and didn't do anything for emails and URLs.

Punakea looks like a great application. I'll be using it throughout the day to see how effective it is but it might solve two problems with one stone (so to speak). I've also been searching for a way to tag my Safari bookmarks and Punakea allows you to tag both emails and bookmarks. You still have to use its interface but I'm siked to start using it.

After a few days of using Punakea I'm not sure how I went this long without it. I've been using it mainly for research coordination on a recent endeavor into Facebook platform programming. It has helped me keep downloaded files, emails, and related URLs organized and centralized. I don't have to know where my computer stored it as long as I know what tag I filed it under. The tagging system is flexible and easy to use. I've tagged emails, URLs, PDFs, folders, files. I'm starting to use it for jQuery development and to even track the various social media I utilize on the web. The drop panel is a great time saver. I only wish there were more keyboard shortcuts to use for tagging stuff.

Either way, this software is incredible and I strongly recommend using it. If they started charging for this app I'd almost need to buy since I've started to integrate it into my workflow so tightly. Trust me, try it and you'll see what I mean.

Anyone else use this software (or any other tagging apps / solutions)? What are your thoughts on tagging in general?