Product Reviews

Tagging is everywhere. You'd be hard pressed to find any sort of link- or photo-sharing web site where tags (aka keywords) aren't applied by users to their data.

It makes sense to tag things. You're likely to remember tags you create, which makes finding things easier. And one object can have many tags, so it can be cross-referenced with other objects by combining search options.

Punakea is a free application designed to help you tag files on your hard disk, and find them using tags later. Using it might feel a little strange at first, but with some perseverance it can become a useful

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tool; not an alternative to the Finder, but certainly a helpful extra.

There are two interface elements: a browser window, where you find files using a "tag cloud" of clickable hyperlinks, and a sidebar that sits on either the left or right side of your screen, hidden out of sight until you need to use it. The top of the sidebar is a nice large target for dropping files on. Further down it are lists of your most recent, and most popular tags. Having dropped files on the target, Punakea becomes the frontmost application and asks you to enter tags that apply to those files. You can also simply drop files on a recent or popular tag, and skip the manual tagging altogether.

The real value of a system like this only emerges after you have spent some time tagging a lot of files. You might, for example, use tags to bring related project files together. They could be scattered in all sorts of Finder locations, but Punakea lets you view them as a group. There's undoubted usefulness to be found here, but you need to commit to rigorous and regular tagging of your files to make it worthwhile. For freeware still only at version 0.1, Punakea is a good effort and has plenty of potential.