Michael Tsai has released an update to his tag-smart, open-format PIM app EagleFiler.

Michael could have aimed higher and called it EagleFiler 2.0; with over 110+ new improvements and tweaks, it certainly carries enough newness to warrant the higher number.

Fortunately, I don’t have to type them all out. Michael has provided a complete changelog for the update.

Here are five new features in the app that caught my eye:

1. IMAP support and smarter Mail.app capture. EagleFiler can now IMAP mailboxes and individual email messages from Apple Mail. Nice!
2. Omnivorous, universal importing. You can now import every file known to mankind into EagleFiler. If it doesn’t know how to display it, EagleFiler displays the icon for the file and lets you open it in another app.
3. Tag auto-completion. Tags now auto-complete as you type them, a great feature which saves both time and errors. EagleFiler now also displays an item’s tags in the status bar at the bottom of the window, so what you see them easily and edit or add to them.
4. Quick Editing of web archives. A new “Added Convert For Editing” command quickly converts web archives to RTFD files for editing.
5. Import of MailTags projects as tags. Emails marked with MailTags projects are tagged with those project names when imported into EagleFiler.

That only scratches the surface.

With the new tagging improvements especially, people who are into Getting Things Done (GTD) will find it even easier to adapt the tips in yesterday’s “Getting Things Done with Yojimbo” post to EagleFiler.

I find it hard to place EagleFiler into a hierarchy or scheme with other personal information managers (PIMs). It is more flexible but less polished than Yojimbo, more open but less fully featured than SOHO Notes, less powerful but less bloated than the DEVONthink projects.

Perhaps the best way for you to judge is to test it out yourself.

A demo is available from Michael’s site . If you like it, a licence costs USD 40.

Related posts

• Yojimbo 1.3: Tagging, hyperlinks and more
• While I was busy…
• Using Mail.app as a Yojimbo substitute
• MailTags 2.2 Public Beta 4: Polished flexibility
• MailTags 2.0 Public Beta is here!

Chronos released an update to its SOHO Notes Information Manager (formerly StickyBrain) over the weekend.

The new version features improvements to the app’s blogging and clipboard features as well as a raft of bugfixes, including a fix for handling URLs from Firefox.

Users will benefit most from the new clipboard functions in the DockNote.

Clippings can now be opened, edited and deleted from the clipboard recorder.

A clipping can be saved into Notes as a new note or be replaced with a selection from the current application.

In addition, when the clipboard recorder is turned off, it now stays off.

This means the the DockNote now contains a viable clipboard recorder, which could potentially replace apps like JumpCut or CuteClips.

Other improvements include the option to specify which folder the “Print to PDF” service will save to, better remembering of column width and position between launches (still a problem for me), better explanation of the SOHO sync service, and imrpvoements to Sync’s tolerance of sync faults.

Blogging features have also been improved. A bug preventing notes from being published to TypePad accounts has been fixed.

The app’s Preferences now include a new pane for its blogging features.

It can handle multiple blogging accounts and authentications:

SOHO Notes is shareware (USD 39.99) and is available from the Chronos web site .

Related posts

• Yojimbo 1.2: Smarter integration
• Getting organised: Four note managers reviewed
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Will Henderson has written a “micro-app” that lets you quickly email a note, to-do or reminder to yourself in Mail.app.

He got frustrated by iCal’s to-dos, which didn’t quite do what he wanted, as he explains:

For a while now, I’ve been sending myself todos via iCal, but that’s not good enough - it requires a net connection and it doesn’t cover many usage scenarios, i.e.
• I want a task that doesn’t have a particular due date
• I want a task that can be filed or tagged (using Mailtags , of course)
• I want searchable notes attached to my task

Despite a small bug (notes are sometimes sent to the Drafts folder not the Inbox), the app does a good job.

You can collect the notes or to-dos in a smart mailbox easily. A condition that matches “Yourself” as a recipient catches them all.

This may appeal to people who are interested in using Mail.app as a personal information manager or as a “Yojimbo substitute” as well as those who like Will want more flexible and taggable to-dos.

Note to Self is donation-ware and is available from Will’s web site .

Related posts

• Will Leopard Mail kill MailTags?
• MailTags 2.0 Public Beta is here!
• MailTags 1.2.1: Tweaks, Partial IMAP support
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• Get your hands on Mail 3.0 now

Rui Carmo at Tao of Mac has been thinking about Yojimbo .

First, he takes a peek under the hood, considers its underlying SQLite database and how the app fits into the current debate over open formats.

Secondly, he concludes that the things Yojimbo does well -

it’s pretty damn simple to use, lets you tag and encrypt items, and lets you find things pretty fast (as well as arbitrarily slicing and dicing your data in views of your own choosing).

- are exactly the kinds of things that Mail.app coupled with an IMAP account was born to do. “Why use another wheel?” he asks.

Hawk Wings has posted about people consciously using Mail.app as a Personal Information Manager before, but Rui takes the idea one step further.

As the ponders the various ways of getting his information into Mail.app, he covers Quicksilver actions, reading your RSS/Atom feeds as email, tagging and more.

An excellent read.

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• EagleFiler 1.1: 110+ improvements and bugfixes

Barebones has released another update to Yojimbo, its information management app.

The new features focus on better integration, making it easier to get information in and out and to link items into other apps.

One-click bookmarking or archiving

Yojimbo 1.2 contains bookmarklets for Safari, Camino, Firebox and OmniWeb. When placed in a bookmark toolbar, they offer one-click bookmarking or archiving of URLs.

This is nifty, although keyboard shortcut fans may still prefer to use Fraser Speir’s applescript for archiving, which can be launched with a single keystroke through FastScripts or some similar app (although see Jade’s remarks in the comments).

Linking items

A new “Copy Item Link” option in the Edit menu allows you to insert an application-specific URL into Yojimbo notes or another app altogether.

For example, using this new feature you can paste a link to a particular Yojimbo item into an iCal reminder or event:

Clicking on the URL in the information pane, jumps you straight to the linked item in Yojimbo.

Smarter Importing and Exporting

Yojimbo now exports bookmarks and URL clipping files rather then text files and includes comment data with exported plain text items like serial numbers and passwords.

In addition, copying or dragging items places additional formatting information on the pasteboard that can be used by applications that support it.

Importing .webloc clippings now uses the .webloc’s filename as the item name rather than the URL.

Other features

New users are now treated to a QuickTime movie when they first launch the app (old users can see it too by accessing the “Quick Start Movie” option in the Help menu. A “Getting started” document also outlines some of the basic features.

Search terms are now highlighted in matching notes, PDFs and web archives.

It also fixes a number of bugs in earlier versions. You can read a detailed changelog of additions, fixes and changes on the Bare Bones site.

No sign of the feature I most hope for, the ability to email an item easily. This seems odd to me, as I can’t be the only person who uses email as my main way to share information.

Yojimbo is shareware (USD 39 for an individual user, USD 29 for students and faculty, USD 69 for a family pack, up to five users) and is available from Bare Bones .

Related posts

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• SOHO Notes 5.6.0: Clipboard, blogging improvements
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The developer of StickyBrain is either feeling the heat from Bare Bones’ competing product, Yojimbo, or is just inspired by it.

A new StickyBrain beta (4.1b3) released today introduces at least three new features found in Yojimbo and offers a number of other significant new functions including a full-screen view, a post to blog option and new “Daily Notes” and “Journal” formats.

You can find screenshots and more after the jump…

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Related posts

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• Yojimbo 1.2: Smarter integration
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• StickyBrain is no more