Houdah Software (http://www.houdah.com/) has updated HoudahSpot, their Spotlight front end for Mac OS X, to version 3.0. The new version adds a full set of tools for tagging files as well as for finding tagged files.

Tags are non-hierarchical keywords assigned to files. They serve a similar purpose than folders. The crucial difference being that a file may be assigned several tags and be located by any of them.

HoudahSpot’s tagging feature is based upon the OpenMeta technology, so is compatible with a growing number of third party tagging applications. The HoudahSpot Tray lists favorite tags as well as tags recently used by HoudahSpot or another OpenMeta tagging solution. Drag a file to a tag to assign it that tag. Drag a file to the file well to be presented with a window to enter any number of tags. Select tags and double-click to start a search. Hold down the option key while double-clicking to match any of the selected tags.

HoudahSpot is a Spotlight front-end for Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) and 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”). With it, users may create detailed queries to pinpoint the exact file they want to get to.

HoudahSpot costs US$30 for a single-user license. It’s a $5 update for registered users.