LinkABoo is a stand-alone app that creates and manages hyperlinks to emails in Mail.app.

It only works with POP messages and it only works with Tiger Mail, but with those restrictions it allows you to create links back to your emails in any other app that supports hyperlinks. Nifty, eh?

This is how it works.

Select the email that you want to create a link to. Launch LinkABoo (if you were doing this a a lot you would want to create a Quicksilver trigger for it) and it presents you with a dialog allowing you to drag the hyperlink into your other app of choice or to copy the link to the clipboard.

Then with the click of your mouse you can open the mail from the other app.

For example, you can dump the hyperlink into an iCal to-do’s URL field (I suppose that there are some people in the world who don’t use MailTags which is even smarter about iCal-Mail integration).

Clicking on the URL field then opens the email to remind you what the to-do or event was about:

The first time you click on the link there is a small delay as LinkABoo consults its SQL database (stored in the ~/Library/Application Support folder) and then finds the matching email. This will also happen if the email is moved, although LinkABoo finds it again fast enough.

You can also use it to hyperlink to emails from a personal information manager app like Yojimbo (or a raft of others):

Or a “Getting Things Done” (GTD) app like EasyTask (or a raft of others):

The possibilities are endless.

LinkABoo is currently free and in beta. You can get it from the developer’s web site .hyperlinks, mail.app, apple mail, yojimbo, ical, productivity, easytask, GTD

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 .productivity, archiving, pim, yojimbo, soho notes, personal information manager, tagging, open format, michael tsai

Jim Correia of Bare Bones Software has posted a script to the Yojimbo mailing list that will pipe a selected email from Mail.app into Yojimbo.

This is handy (a) if you use Yojimbo and (b) like me, you find it a bit of a pain to import emails with the “Save PDF to Yojimbo” option in the PDF section of the Print dialog.

The script will import the contents of the email and the sender, subject and date into a new Yojimbo note:

You can copy the text here:

Or use this pre-complied version. Save it into the same place as the rest of your mail scripts, maybe give it a keyboard short-cut with FastScripts Lite or set a Quicksilver trigger for it or attach it to a Mail Act-on rule, and you’re done.

Nifty. A big thanks to Jim.yojimbo, mail.app, apple mail, applescript, script, importing messages, productivity, shortcuts

David Chartier at TUAW has reviewed four popular note managers—SOHO Notes, Yojimbo, DEVONthink and Journler.

He compares then, listing the pros and cons of each app.

For him, SOHO Notes and Journler tie at the top of the list; SOHO Notes because of the variety of files it handles and its keyboard shortcuts and Journler because of its iLife integration.

Yojimbo wins the beauty contest but not the gymnastics. It just doesn’t have the flexibility he needs.

I wonder how Mori (USD 27.95) and iOrganize (USD 19.95) would have measured up.information managers, PIM, note manager, productivity, yojimbo, SOHO Notes, Journler, not apple mail

Chronos announced in an email today to registered users that StickyBrain has been discontinued and will be replaced by another of the company’s information management apps, SOHO Notes.

SOHO Notes is built from the same code base as StickyBrain but features three additional functions:

• SOHO Notes can synchronize notes between multiple computers using a .Mac account.
• SOHO Notes can access multiple note databases simultaneously.
• SOHO Notes is multi-user capable which means users can share notes with others over a network using the product’s client/server technology.

The two apps cost the same (USD 39.99) and Chronos is offering free transition to existing StickyBrain users.

According to the Vice President of Sales at Chronos, Jerry Halls, the move streamlines the company’s software catalogue:

SOHO Notes is like a big brother to StickyBrain—it does everything StickyBrain does plus more. In order to simplify our product line and bring more focus to our SOHO Series of products, we feel that now is a good time to move our users from StickyBrain to the more powerful SOHO Notes.

Earlier this year Hawk Wings was very impressed with Yojimbo, Bare Bones’ new information manager, and switched from StickyBrain.

It then watched with interest as Chronos appeared to incorporate many of Yojimbo’s features in a subsequent release of StickyBrain.

As a result of today’s change, Chronos now offers an information manager at almost the same price as Yojimbo, but with stronger multi-user and network features. yojimbo, stickybrain, information management, productivity, PIM, notes, snippets

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

Yojimbo’s new boomarklets for archiving and bookmarking web pages are great. But you will have noticed that they don’t flag new items for your attention. A solution is not far away.

As Jim heIpfully pointed out in the comments to an earlier post on Yojimbo 1.2, you can add flags to new items by gently hacking the code of the javascript.

All you need to do is add &flagged=YES to the script’s parameter list:

1. Open the bookmarks manager in your browser.
2. Find the bookmarklets that came with Yojimbo 1.2, probably in your bookmarks bar or toolbar folder.
3. In Safari, click once on the address field to select it and carefully type in the extra code.

I’ve highlighted in the following screenshots what works for me, (i) for the archive script:

And (ii) for the bookmark script:

Yojimbo, hotkey, trigger, quicksilver, bookmarklet, flags, flagged item