Hawk Wings » information manager

EagleFiler 1.1: 110+ improvements and bugfixes

Tim Gaden — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:53:28 +0000

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:

IMAP support and smarter Mail.app capture. EagleFiler can now IMAP mailboxes and individual email messages from Apple Mail. Nice!
Omnivorous, universal importing. You can now import every file known to mankind into EagleFiler. If it doesnâ€™t know how to display it, EagleFiler displays the icon for the file and lets you open it in another app.
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.
Quick Editing of web archives. A new “Added Convert For Editing” command quickly converts web archives to RTFD files for editing.
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. mail.app, apple mail, emails, imap, productivity, tagging, information manager, tags, pimSimilar Posts:

SOHO Notes 5.6.0: Clipboard, blogging improvements

Tim Gaden — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:22:32 +0000

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 .StickyBrain, productivity, SOHO Notes, information manager, clipboard, blogging, PIM, not Apple MailSimilar Posts:

Quickly email yourself with “Note to Self”

Tim Gaden — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 14:28:28 +0000

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.
â€¢ I want a task that doesn’t have a particular due date
â€¢ I want a task that can be filed or tagged (using Mailtags , of course)
â€¢ 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 .productivity, information manager, mail.app, apple mail, notes, to-dos, iCal, helpful appsSimilar Posts:

Using Mail.app as a Yojimbo substitute

Tim Gaden — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:08:23 +0000

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.IMAP, mail.app, apple mail, information manager, productivity, yojimbo, open format, tips

Similar Posts:

Yojimbo 1.2: Smarter integration

Tim Gaden — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:56:40 +0000

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 . yojimbo, productivity, information manager, PIM, bookmarklets, not apple mail Similar Posts:

StickyBrain 4.1b3 gets Yojimboed

Tim Gaden — Sat, 06 May 2006 11:22:11 +0000

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…

StickyBrain’s DockNote: StickyBrain has added a side-drawer to the edge of the screen like Yojimbo’s Drop Dock:

It allows you to drag and drop content in a wide variety of formats into StickyBrain. It also offers the ability to paste notes from the side-drawer directly into the current application.

Labels: StickyBrain now has labels very much after the fashion of Yojimbo’s labels:

The labels consist of a name and a colour, both of which can be edited. You can also search by label (as you can in Yojimbo), which gives labels a basic “tagging” function.

Print to PDF: The new beta adds an option to the Print dialog that enables printing directly into StickyBrain as a PDF. You can see it in this screenshot directly under Yojimbo’s print to PDF option:

This new version also adds audio recording capabilities to Audio notes, the ability to post notes to any blog that supports the Atom protocol and new Daily Notes and Journal folders which automatically insert a date stamp into the notes title.

A full screen option for viewing and editing notes is nice and will please those who like to work in full screen mode to reduce distracitons.

Printing improvements also include support for printing Bookmark, Web Archive, Image, and PDF notes.

Even a die-hard Yojimbo convert like me has to admit that StickyBrain now leads the pack. It makes me look forward to what Bare Bones will do to raise the bar again.

StickyBrain is shareware (USD 39.99) and is available from the developer’s web site .

I found the beta on MacUpdate . stickybrain, yojimbo, information manager, productivitySimilar Posts:

.Mac IMAP mail as information manager

Tim Gaden — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:16:09 +0000

Not many people know this (I didn’t) but .Mac has an official blog .

The most recent entry, “Using .Mac mail as your everywhere notebook” , points out that you can easily use an IMAP account like .Mac to store information online that is then accessible from any computer anywhere.

A Joyent user, Matt, has discovered the same thing. In a long and entertaining post on Joyent’s forums, he describes an epiphany which led him to dump his information manager and use an IMAP account instead:

So now that I’m using a folder on my IMAP server to store things like directions to that restaurant or my car insurance account number, I can shed one extraneous app, and everything is as searchable and sortable as it should be. Assuming I’ve mailed it to myself, I can find whatever document I need from home, from the office, and from someone else’s computer.

He still has to use Mail.app to search the content of his messages, but for the most part he is much happier in a more Web 2.0 world.dotmac, .mac, IMAP, email, information manager, joyent, web 2.0 Similar 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

What some other bloggers are thinking
StickyBrain and Yojimbo compared
Out goes StickyBrain, in comes Yojimbo
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: