Mac News Briefs: Major update for Workgroups suite

A Document Organizer and browser-based proofing tool highlight the changes in Workgroups 2010. MetaCommunications announced the updated version of its productivity management software suite for marketing, creating design, packaging, and prepress workgroups on Wednesday.

The Document Organizer lets users drag-and-drop digital media—including files, e-mails, scanned documents, and attachments—into Workgroups 2010. The system will automatically copy or move that media to the correct location on the file server. The browser-based document proofer includes markup tools for annotating PDF documents and image files.

In conjunction with the new version of Workgroups, MetaCommunications launched a community Web site called Developer Center, aimed at letting Workgroups developers, administrators, and users interact with each other and share forms, solutions, and code snippets.

The desktop version of Workgroups runs on Snow Leopard in addition to the Tiger and Leopard versions of Mac OS X. Complete multi-user suite bundles start at $4,995 with individual modules starting at $1,695; MetaCommunications has more detailed information about pricing on its Web site.—Philip Michaels

IntelliScanner adds $99 organizational tool to lineup

IntelliScanner announced on Wednesday added a sub-$100 product to its lineup of scanner-based organizational tools with the release of IntelliScanner Classic.

The $99 USB barcode scanner and attendant software collects information on media such as books and movies. The scanner reads the retail barcode and automatically identifies the items, importing data about them from online databases. The included media organization software lets you organize your media, create bookmarks, keep track of lending, and generate insurance reports.

The $99 product requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later and a USB port. A special $79 price is available to qualified teachers and students.—Dan Moren

Carbon Copy Cloner works with Snow Leopard’s HFS+

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3, the latest version of Bombich Software’s disk cloning utility, was released on Wednesday, adding Snow Leopard-specific improvements as well as a variety of other enhancements and bug fixes.

The new version works with Snow Leopard’s HFS+ filesystem compression and also now reports disk size using base 10 values for MB and GB, reflecting Snow Leopard’s change. In addition, the software improves the performance of backing up large numbers of files with extended attributes, properly excludes filesystem indexes such as those created by Spotlight, and fixes a number of bugs, such as now excluding the Time Machine database when backing up a hard drive.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3 is a free download, but a donation is request. The software requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, including Mac OS X Snow Leopard.—DM

TeamViewer adds instant messaging for Mac users

TeamViewer has updated its remote access and support application, adding instant messaging functions for Mac users.

TeamViewer Mac 4.1.6717 includes full instant messaging capabilities with anyone in a user’s partner list. In addition, the updated version of TeamViewer allows a Custom QuickSupport module to be created for Mac OS X users.

TeamViewer provides remote access over the Internet. The application is free for non-commercial, personal use, with other pricing options available for business, premium, and corporate users.—PM