The public beta of Gridiron Flow for Mac has been released, and I have to say I'm blown away. I love Curio for project management and brainstorming, but for the nitty gritty of version management, file collection and project source file relationships I'd just as soon have something magically do the job for me. Flow does it quite nicely, at least with Adobe, iWork, Office files and the like. As all-seeing as this software is, it inflicts a remarkably small hit on system resources. Mike Rose filmed a great preview last year, so have a look at that, and at Gridiron's FAQ for Flow, for a better idea of what it does than I could convey here.

The beta is available for download, and currently has no restrictions. I expect Flow to be a costly bit of software, but I haven't been able to track down any price predictions yet (Update, as pointed out by Nicholas in the comments, it's listed -- fairly obviously -- for $249 right now. About what I expected, really ). For now, have a look and dig into automatic versioning, tag-based organization and project visualization that just takes care of itself. It's especially geared toward designers, and will be of the most interest to those who spend their time with InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Personally, I'm hoping I don't get too hooked on it only to find out it's outrageously expensive. Here's hoping for some pocketbook sympathy!

Source code versioning isn't something that usually gets attention here on TUAW. Subversion, the versioning tool of choice, is largely accessed via the command line to check in and out source, however, the people behind Made by Sofa decided that Subversion needed a nice looking client, so they built one. Versions is just entering a private beta, so be sure to sign up if you are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about. Their website is a little light on the details at the moment, but they promise that you will be able to doing everything that you could do via the command line with Versions, and enjoy a nice GUI to boot.

What's not to like?

Thanks, Andreas Creten.

I'm looking forward to Leopard's Time Machine, but Versomatic - at least based on the description - is going to truly rock my world. It's not the first app to offer this kind of versioning and archiving, but it sounds better than those that have come before.

Versomatic is a new utility from Acertant which runs as a background service, tracking changes to your files over time. It needs no additional hardware and is a great complement to your existing backup strategy. Once installed it tracks changes, and preemptively archives a copy of a file you're about to edit prior to your modifying the file. You can tell it which file types to track and which to ignore - or set it to ignore entire directories if you wish. Files are stored in their native format and you can specify how much hard drive space is available for version stores and how many revisions to keep track of. Prior revisions are accessible from a contextual menu or from the Version Manager in your menubar. The edit trail and export features can also be used to prove authorship, copyright, and as part of any complete Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA compliance strategy, which many Enterprise users will appreciate.

I just tried the newly available Version 1.0 for Mac and the install and initial preference setting was a breeze, despite requiring me to restart. I tested it out on a few Word docs and text files and it works as advertised so far. Of course only time will tell how well it really works and whether it affects performance in any way, but so far I like what I see.

Versomatic can be download now and has a 30-day free trial. Early Birds can purchase it for $39.99 (20% off the regular price) and volume discounts are available. It's Universal Binary, but does require Mac OS X 10.4 or newer. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think of it!

Mike Zornek, fellow Mac geek and Philadelphian, has created a very good screencast that covers installing, and using, Subversion on OS X.

What's Subversion?

A versioning system that allows a large group of people to work on the same files without worrying about overwriting each other's work. It is very useful in development shops were more than one set of hands touches code.

Take a look at the screencast (it is about 15 minutes long) and get a good intro into both Subversion and versioning in general.