Hawk Wings » bare bones

Mailsmith: New Intel-friendly public beta

Tim Gaden — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:01:22 +0000

Bare Bones has announced a new public beta of Mailsmith, its (once upon a time) landmark email client.

Mailsmith 2.2 (beta) is a universal build, so it runs with all the grunt that an Intel Mac can provide.

It also changes the way in which email data is stored. Once you start using it, you can’t go back to Mailsmith 2.1.5.

The new version features an updated user interface:

Mailsmith picks up numerous changes to the UI, built-in text editing, and transformation abilities, all derived from BBEdit 8/TextWrangler 2. They are too numerous to list here, but generally fall into the realm of Unicode support, improved Mac OS X appearance and behavior, and various performance and behavior refinements.

Other updates include more options for handling compressed archives, the ability to import gzipped mbox files, a new “flag” option for messages, a new top-level menu for Bare Bones “Clippings” feature, improved display of emails composed with the “format=flowed” option (hurrah!) and more.

The full list of improvements is provided in an email from Bare Bones CEO Rich Siegal on the Mailsmith mailing list along with this warning:

Mailsmith 2.2 is not ready for release to the general public. It is pre-release software, which has not been completely tested or debugged. We will do our best to fix any bugs that are reported; but you must acknowledge, at least to yourself, that you are assuming a certain amount of risk by using this pre-release version; and that by assuming that risk, you accept all responsibility for the consequences of doing so.

If you dare, you can download a copy of the new beta from Bare Bones web site.

Mailsmith doesn’t support new-fangled things like IMAP or Exchange accounts.

[Via TUAW ]mailsmith, bare bones, email, not mail.app, not apple mail, format=flowed, POPSimilar Posts:

Yojimbo 1.1: Martial your info with power and beauty

Tim Gaden — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 13:24:36 +0000

Yojimbo, a great new information manager from the Bare Bones stable, has been updated. All the fine features that first lured me away from StickyBrain are still there, but now there’s even more to like about it.

First, it is now AppleScript-able. Almost all the items in Yojimbo can be scripted, so I would expect some nifty scripts to appear soon which will speed Yojimbo up even more. (UPDATE: Within minutes of me putting this up, Fraser Speirs writes in the comments about some scripts he has already knocked out for web archives and NetNewsWire headlines and that he has posted on his wiki . Sweet!).

Secondly, searching has been significantly improved. It now searches like Mail.app and iTunes, automatically inserting an AND between separate words. The toolbar displays the search stats as it does in other apps. The “All” search option is more comprehensive.

Thirdly, several existing features have been tweaked. You can now sync with .Mac when Yojimbo is not running. Launching the app is noticeably faster and some bits of the interface have been reworked to make them clearer.

Fourthly, PDF handling is much better, especially with password-protected PDFs.

There’s no sign of the nested folders that many users requested after the first release, but I’m sure that they are not far away. Nor is there any sign of closer integration with Mail.app, which is one of my hopes.

Lastly, there is now a “Buy Yojimbo…” command on the application menu when running in demo mode. That’s important because you should buy it or, at least, take the product tour at Bare Bones, try it out and then buy it .

Software as smart and pretty as this deserves its reward.

(Sorry about the pun).yojimbo, information manager, pdfs, applescript, nested folders, syncing, bare bones, productivitySimilar Posts:

Yojimbo: Bare Bones’ new information manager

Tim Gaden — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:26:33 +0000

I’ve been a happy user of StickyBrain , an information manager, as long as I have used a Mac.

When Bare Bones Software launched their new information manager, Yojimbo, last week I decided to give it a go.

I’ve been using it a lot and I like it.

If you are interested in information managers and organising yourself (“productivity”), you can read the full review after the jump.

Looks the business

The first and most surprising thing about Yojimbo is how good it looks. Bare Bones’ flagship products, BBEdit and MailSmith , are not known for their eye-candy.

They have serious, no-nonsense, almost pre-Mac OS X interfaces like this:

Yojimbo, however, is very handsome indeed.

It has a very polished interface that offers yet more evidence of the rise and rise of the Mail.app-like look:

The “Mailbox Drawer” on the left contains pre-made folders and any custom folders you have created. You can give your folders any image that QuickTime understands.

Does the business

Not only does it look good, it has organization muscle too.

Yojimbo can save and manage links to web pages and other online resources, short texts or notes, clips, quotations, instructions, song lyrics like any other information manager.

It also has some neat features that help it stand out from the pack. It can keep your login and password information for web sites and servers, encrypting them for added security. It also stores serial numbers and can save snapshots of entire web pages as Web Archives.

In another clever trick, an option is added to the PDF services menu in your Mac’s Print panel, allowing you print a receipt for an online purchase directly into Yojimbo, where you can store and encrypt it.

Four features in particular have impressed me:

Smart folders: The pre-set folders, called “Smart Collections”, display all your flagged item, the 20 most recently added items, all your web archives and PDFs, passwords, bookmarks and serial numbers, regardless of which custom collection you have stored them in. Another smart folder shows you all the items that are not yet in any custom collection.

It would be even nicer if you could make your own smart collections, but this is still a very useful feature for finding stuff fast.

UPDATE: Founder and CEO of Bare Bones, Rich Siegel, confirms in the comments below that the ability to create your own smart collections is something Bare Bones is working on. Excellent!

Quick Input Panel: Yojimbo lacks the StickyBrain’s Contextual Menu options for clipping without leaving the app you are in. But Yojimbo adds a Quick Input Panel to do the same job. Copy something to the clipboard, then hit a hotkey to bring up the Input Panel:

It is quite clever at auto-inserting the clipboard contents into the relevant field for each kind of note you can create on the fly.

You can also use this (as here) to create a new note, storing a thought for later without interrupting what you are doing at the time.

The Drop Dock: Yojimbo has another way of adding new items. The Drop Dock adds a Drop Drawers-like tab to the edge of your desktop. Selecting something with your mouse and then dragging it over the tab, opens the drawer. You then have the option of dropping the item directly into your Library or a custom collection:

.Mac Syncing: StickBrain uses .Mac to make a backup which you can them restore to the same computer or download to another.

Yojimbo takes .Mac use to a higher level. Using Tiger’s sync engine, it allows you to add all your settings and items to the list of things that are automatically synced between your Macs:

A set-and-forget, always synchronised database of the information you need, whatever computer you are sitting at. Sweet.

Is the business

StickyBrain has been around for longer and has a richer feature-set. Some of those things I will miss (until Bare Bones adds them) — the ability to email a note, linking different items together and linking items with Address Book contacts.

These days no app seems quite complete without a QuickSilver plugin, so I’m looking forward to that too. (Although see the tip posted in the comments below).

But I am impressed enough with Yojimbo to switch. In addition to the things mentioned above, Yojimbo feels faster and seems to suck less energy from my system.

Like all of Bare Bones products, the attention to detail is amazing. The help documentation is beautifully laid out and illustrated. Little things like that speak volumes.

It can only get even better. Bare Bones got my money (USD 39).

Links:
Yojimbo at Bare Bones

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Yojimbo Review address book, bare bones, bookmarks, contextual menu, information manager, mail.app, organization, passwords, pdf, productivity, quicksilver, smart folders, stickybrain, sync engine, yojimboSimilar Posts: