I am still working out how to manage my new Real Life job better so that Hawk Wings gets more of my time.

Most recently, while I was busy…

1. KIT (”Keep It Together”), a nice personal information manager that almost gives Yojimbo a run for its money, was substantially updated. It now boasts a slicker interface, searchable tags, five star rating (à la iTunes) and more — see the full changelog for all the improvements.
2. OMIC got an update too. This utility which unpacks the dreaded winmail.dat files Outlook users sometimes send (see earlier Hawk Wings review) now has support for installation over Apple Remote Desktop and for RTF text, and is packaged in a smarter installer.
3. MailRecent 1.0.3 now adds any moves or copies using a MailRecent menu to the “Move to … Again” (or “Copy to … Again”) menu items in the Message menu and the corresponding contextual menu. This means that the last “recent” move or copy can be repeated via that menu item or the built-in Mail keyboard shortcut Option-Command-T.

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Yojimbo and EagleFiler, two personal information management apps, have been updated.

Both gain greater support for AppleScript and well as other enhancements making them easier and quicker to use.

Yojimbo 1.4 gains an “Untagged” factory collection, so that you can see at a glance which items are untagged.

Like many people, I was hoping for a change to the smart collections for tags, which would allow an option for matching “either/or” on multiple tags.

This didn’t happen.

The only option for multiple tags is still “match all”.

The big ticket item in this update is the improved AppleScript support.

Yojimbo now has a solid AppleScript dictionary.

I am not very good at AppleScript myself, but this does open the way for others who are to write scripts that will better integrate Yojimbo in our workflows.

I’m looking forward to that. More examples like Dylan’s Yojimbo, del.icio.us and NetNewsWire scripts can only be a good thing.

An extension in the way URLs that point to HTML are handled makes it possible to import Mailsmith HTML attachments and the contents of the Firefox Scrapbook collection.

EagleFiler 1.1.2 also features improved AppleScript support, including a new “import text” command which takes a text string and creates a new rich text file in the library.

Navigating through the various elements of the interface with the tab key is now more reliable.

Users of PDFView can capture PDFs in EagleFiler.

The operation of EagleFiler is snappier due to improvements in the way emptying the trash and indexing searches are handled.

Many tweaks and fixes are also included, which you can read in the full changelog .

Yojimbo 1.4 is a free update for registered users. So is EagleFiler 1.1.2 .

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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.

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Bare Bones has updated Yojimbo, adding support for tagging, hyperlinks, better handling of passwords, improved web archive support and some interface tweaks (see the full changelog here ).

The big ticket item for many will be tagging. And Bare Bones has left no stone unturned in implementing it.

Tags can be entered in the item’s Inspector, directly in the item’s details bar or through the quick input panel. In addition, new bookmarklets for the major Mac browsers allow the option of adding tags at the point of bookmarking or archiving a web page.

You can find the new bookmarklets by searching Yojimbo’s help for “bookmark”.

As one would expect the tags are nice aqua tokens. They auto-complete and Yojimbo even offers you options if your typing matches more than one, as you can see here in a screenshot of tagging via an item’s new look details bar:

Yojimbo lets you find tagged items again by searching for them or by creating “tag collections”, smart folders that match on user-defined tags. It can also display them as a new column in the interface’s main view.

Unfortunately, the tag collections can only match items with “all” the nominated tags. There is no “any” option. Surely that will soon be fixed:

People looking for a more keyboard-orientated way to tag, will be glad to find that two tab-key strokes bring you to the tagging field in an item’s details bar.

The new version also provides for hyperlinking within items. You can add web URLs or links to emails with LinkABoo or (soon) MailTags and add links to files and folder just by dragging them onto the hyperlink dialog:

Lists and Tables are now supported in notes too, which is nice.

Other new features include provision for Yojimbo to use Apple’s Keychain, more details options for how passwords are handled and Command-clicking in web archives to open URLs in the background.

Perhaps I should also mention that Yojimbo users who also use Mail.app will get a lot of mileage out of an applescript that pipes selected emails into Yojimbo. I use this a lot.

Yojimbo costs USD 39 (educational licence USD 29). The full version and a demo are available from Bare Bones’ web site .

UPDATE: Patrick Rhone has some interesting thoughts on the new tags in Yojimbo 1.3 vs. traditional sorting by sub-folders, part of the great “tag in one archive vs. file in folders” debate.

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SpamSieve developer Michael Tsai has released a personal information manager that takes the fight right up to established apps like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes.

While EagleFiler is a powerful, fully-featured information manager, it offers more flexible tagging and annotation options than other apps. Also, although it uses a Core Data SQL database to track your files, it stores them in an “open format” library or Finder folder, just like iPhoto or iTunes. This will not only please open format advocates, but allows other apps to access the data easily and makes backups much more efficient.

The interface has the much admired three-pane Mail-like look (just like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes):

It provides numerous ways for importing or capturing the information you want to store. A system-wide capture key (F1 by default) allows you snag info (EagleFiler handles emails from all the major email clients, web pages, PDFs, word processing files, iChat logs, audio files and more - see the full list ) without interrupting your workflow, although files can also be dragged to the Dock icon, interface or dedicated “Drop Pad”.

Integration with Growl is a nice touch, providing notification of successful capture without the need to switch apps and check.

Mail can’t (yet) be imported directly from IMAP accounts, but has to be moved to a local folder first. Michael says that he hopes to overcome this limitation in later releases.

To make up for that, MailTags users will be delighted to hear that EagleFiler will import its tags along with the emails. Nifty!

It also provides flexible ways of organising your data. Hierarchical folders and labels allow “folder-lovers” every opportunity to indulge; it even supports multiple libraries for the ultimate in data separation.

“Archivers” will value the ability to find things in one huge folder through the app’s Search function which supports Boolean or phrase searches.

Tag support is something that Yojimbo and SOHO Notes don’t provide. In EagleFiler you can tag each items with as many tags as you want.

A tag pane allows you to add, customise and add color to your tags.

You can also set a character or symbol for each tag, which shows up in the app’s main viewer.

Tags are also displayed in the folder list on the left, so that it is easy quickly to find all the items with a particular tag.

Further options for labelling, naming and tagging are provided by an Inspector window.

You can enter tags in a field obscured in the screenshot by the drop-down menu for the labels (which are Finder labels and can be edited in Finder’s Preferences pane).

People who feel constricted by Yojimbo’s lack of support for hierarchical folders or restricted meta-data options will love the flexibility EagleFiler offers without the need to switch to SOHO Notes’ OpenBase database engine.

EagleFiler’s preferences are minimal and mainly control the look of the interface.

You can also customise the capture key here.

EagleFiler also pitches itself as an archiver for Mail.app and other email clients.

Michael suggests:

Most e-mail programs are designed for communicating with your mail server and letting you read and write messages—not for storing all your old mail. By cleaning out your mail program’s database, you can remove some clutter from its mailbox list and speed it up. But cleaning it out doesn’t have to mean lots of time wasted trying to predict which messages you might need in the future. Disk space is plentiful—just archive all your old mail into EagleFiler. Later, you’ll be able to find what you need with a quick search. Meanwhile, the archived messages will no longer be slowing down Spotlight searches of your files and current messages.

I was very impressed. It is more flexible than Yojimbo. Its open format makes it more attractive than SOHO Notes. EagleFiler doesn’t have the full range of extra features — syncing, blogging support, full-screen option, alarms, etc — that SOHO Notes provides. That’s a pleasing lack of feature bloat for me. YMMV.

EagleFiler is shareware (USD 40) and a 30 day free demo is available from Michael’s web site .

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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 .

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