Perceiving a need, Thomas Tempelmann authored an excellent little freeware replacement for the pre-Tiger OS X Find utility called Find Any File, which he’s just updated to Version 1.5. Unlike Spotlight, Find Any File doesn’t use an indexed database, but instead taps the file system driver’s fast search operations, where available. This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content.

Fresh is a brand new application for OS X that is essentially a file management tool. What it does is take every file that you have interacted with, and shows it in a list. If you edit a Word file, download a file, save an e-mail attachment, take a screenshot, etc., it will show up, newest first, in Fresh’s top green “Recently Created” panel. In everyday computer use, this isn’t much help. But when you’re working on a project, it can be a huge time saver.

We’ve all probably had that time when we quickly opened TextEdit or our word processor and jabbled down a few words then saved it. Because we were in such a rush, we may of forgetten what we named it. Or you just got some new pictures through your webmail and don’t have time to upload them to MobileMe or Flickr, so you just drag them to a folder. I’m sure there are a lot of other scenarios, but how do we find that missing file?

Learn five ways after the break

CTM Development has announced FoxTrot Professional Search, their document retrieval and indexing utility for Mac OS X. A powerful new find-by-content product for mobile, legal or media professionals and their networks, CTM FoxTrot Professional Search offers precision tools for finding the proverbial “needle in a haystack” within PDF, HTML, word processing, e-mail and rich-media metadata. more »

Aside from the major redesign on Apple.com, several minor updates were also launched on Apple’s website throughout the week. The search bar is the latest item to receive the same treatment; it now has the dynamic look and feel of Spotlight on Mac OS X. Possible results start to appear as you enter your query, more »