The idea of tagging files as an organization and project management method has been around for some time now, and we've mentioned applications in the past (FileSpot, TagBot, Punakea ... ) which touched on some useful applications for the tagging method. A truly seamless, system-wide implementation, however, has been hard to find. Back at WWDC, Gravity applications gave me a taste of a new application which takes the concept to a new level. Tags, finally released yesterday, provides a hotkey-triggered HUD which allows tagging and searching from a wide range of applications, including:

• Finder and Path Finder
• Mail
• Address Book
• iPhoto
• Safari
• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.)
• Adobe Photoshop
• Xcode
• Rapidweaver
• Omnioutliner
• Pages and Keynote
• Quicktime

Tags uses Spotlight metadata instead of the old Spotlight comments method. Files tagged with Tags are immediately indexed in Spotlight, allowing for searches and Smart Folders outside of Tags, as well as integration with other Spotlight-enabled applications. Its keyword storage method is directly compatible with Ironic Software's Deep, and the same method is planned for use in Leap, eventually. Ironic has actually just announced OpenMeta, an open source library for accessing and modifying this kind of metadata (more on that coming soon).

Read on for more on the concepts behind Tags.

Gravity Applications has released a native iPhone application to complement Searchlight, their remote search application based on Spotlight. Searchlight previously sported an iPhone-optimized web interface, and the native app builds on that. Some noteworthy benefits of the native app include storing logins for multiple servers, Bonjour discovery, and a speedier interface than Safari had provided. It also integrates a new feature found on the Searchlight server: the ability to send the files you locate to yourself or a third party via email.

The iPhone app is basic, but it provides a solid foundation for building a richer feature set as it develops, according to developer Niclas Bahn. We discussed some cool features already existing in some of the iPhone file management apps like FileMagnet and Briefcase (iTunes links), and he was excited about implementing some innovations of his own. It will be fun to watch it develop.

The Searchlight iPhone application is free, but requires Searchlight to be running on the computer you'd like search access to. Current users will want to upgrade their Searchlight server to the 2.1 release (the upgrade is free). If you weren't one of the lucky ten readers who got a free copy of Searchlight last time we mentioned it, and the $99 price tag was a bit too high, there's some good news: the price has dropped to $49USD. It may be a temporary price-drop, but it should last long enough for new users to take the demo for a spin and make an informed decision. Get it at Gravity's website, and happy searching!

We gave Niclas and Martin from Gravity Applications a chance to talk about their latest (finished) project: Searchlight. It's an exciting application that provides a web interface to your system-wide Spotlight database, allowing any web browser on any platform (including your iPhone) to search, preview and download files from your computer. The chat was fun, but it got even more interesting after the camera stopped rolling and Niclas showed me their next project. I can't reveal it yet, but I can tell you that I've been excited about it ever since and -- because that's a terrible teaser -- I'll tell you that it's quite likely to be a huge step forward in solving some of my most perplexing organization conundrums. I promise to cover it thoroughly when it's released. In the meantime, here's the Gravity team elaborating on Searchlight and their first time at WWDC. Video after the jump.