I’ve been coding up some new ideas and shuttling Ben back from Vanderbilt (speaking of Ben, keep an eye out for an AWESOME new iPhone app at gotow.net…).  Meanwhile, there have been a couple of good mentions of Default Folder X out there:

Mike Thomas at mthomas.co.uk lists Default Folder X as one of his “to-die-for” apps

DFX is #2 in Tech Radar’s 5 best productivity boosting add-ons

And there will be a new Mac utility appearing here in the near future…

Default Folder X 4.2 shipped today! It delivers support for OpenMeta tagging, improved Rebound behavior, a new AppleScript command, and compatibility with the latest developer build of Snow Leopard.  Full details are on the release page.  Also check out the list of OpenMeta compatible applications at the bottom of the page.

Oh, and something that’s not mentioned in the release notes: As a side effect of some changes I made for Snow Leopard, DFX now loads in Java applications.

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback, testing help, and suggestions.  As always, your input is what helps make Default Folder X such a great tool for all of us!

And now for something completely different…

Some of you may already know that I’m an avid mountain biker - I have almost as many bikes as I do Macintoshes (which is a little scary).  Well, the gym I belong to is sponsoring a spin-a-thon to support the BikeTown Africa Project.  On Sunday, we’ll have a gym full of people pedaling like mad on stationary bikes for four hours to raise awareness and money for BikeTown Africa.

What’s BikeTown Africa?

Founded in 2005 by the Kona Bicycle Co., the Bristol Myers-Squibb Secure the Future Foundation, and Bicycling Magazine, the BikeTown Africa Project provides new, well-built, low-maintenance Kona AfricaBikes to home health care workers in sub-Saharan Africa to facilitate the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.  Just $100 covers the cost of donating one bike, including training its user on maintenance and repair.  Using a bike, a health care worker can visit eight or more patients per day instead of one!

What can you do?

The Weight Club and Virginia Tech University Honors are holding the spin-a-thon on Sunday.  I’m participating and raising money from sponsors because I think this is a very worthwhile cause - it’s putting long-term, practical resources on the ground to help combat a huge health issue.

I’ve set up a page so you can sponsor me for the spin-a-thon here:

http://store.eSellerate.net/stclairsoft/biketown

You can give as little as $5, or as much as you want in $5 increments by buying more than one of the ‘donations’.  I’m personally covering the payment processing cost, so your entire donation will be given to the BikeTown Africa Project.  The spin-a-thon is this Sunday, so please make your donation before noon on Sunday.

Update: Well, the spin-a-thon is over (hence the crossed out donation link) but thanks to readers here and to the dedication of a a lot of folks at the Weight Club and VT University Honors, we raised $7440 for BikeTown Africa!  Thank you!!

- Jon

Default Folder X is the featured product today on MacZOT.  Until midnight CST today (Wednesday, March 25) you can buy a copy for $19.95 - that’s 43% off!

If you’ve been waiting for a great opportunity to add Default Folder X to your toolbox of essential utilities, now’s your chance!

Here’s another development build with refinements to Default Folder X’s new OpenMeta support:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/download/DefaultFolderX-4.2d10.dmg

Changes include:

• Made the autocompletion always respect the case of what you’ve typed, rather than forcing the capital or lowercase form you used last time.
• Fixed an OpenMeta problem that resulted in previous builds failing to start up under Mac OS 10.4.
• Changed OpenMeta tag fields so that it no longer selects all of the tags when Default Folder X first displays them.
• Fixed the localized nibs - they were not connecting the controls in the Spotlight comment window correctly.
• A new AppleScript command, ClearRecentFolders, clears the list of recently used folders in the currently active folder set.
• Corrected a bug that caused Default Folder X to print warning messages in the console like ” ** No alias data for item 0 (folder name) **” when there was a Smart Folder open in the Finder.
• Streamlined DFFinderWindowServer to minimize overhead.

Please keep the comments and feedback coming!  As soon as I’ve got localization strings back, this version should be ready to roll.  In the meantime, I’ll work on compatibility with future operating system changes