Loving Yojimbo

I recently discovered the Yojimbo organizational software by Bare Bones Software, the makers of BBEdit, and I am loving it. There are not too many tools out there that will just slip right into your workflow, make life ten times easier, and not skip a beat. I honestly don’t know how lived with out this tool. I am very much a scatter brain type worker. Many of my documents don’t get anymore organized than on the desktop or in the documents folder. And just as Spotlight and OS X Smart folders have solved my document problem Yojimbo has solved my ideas problem. No more scraps of paper, bookmarks on ten different sites, browsers, or computers, and I never could use stickies they just got in the way. Yojimbo also does passwords and serial numbers. Music & Videos iTunes, Documents Spotlight, Photos iPhoto, and now ideas Yojimbo. Something tells me that Bare Bones should be careful this seems like a prime location for Apple to move into just as they did to Konfabulator with Dashboard. Not that Yojimbo isn’t already with out its competitors. I have found two Wallet by Waterfall Software and Notebook by Circus Ponies.

Where Yojimbo is more idea centric powered by Text Editor, Wallet is more data centric like a more powerful Address Book. Wallet’s strength is that you can make as many of these data collection as you like with what ever fields you like. Where as in Yojimbo you are locked into serial numbers, passwords, or bookmarks and anything else has to be a note. That said Wallet doesn’t have the collection style setup nor the freedom you find in Yojimbo. Also, I don’t believe it has the .mac integration.

Notebook on the other hand is idea centric but also idea specific. The way this program is setup is very inventive. It is just like having an actual paper style organizer on your computer with different section, little tabs, and indices. In other words if you where one of super organized kids in school with one of those multifaceted notebooks for each subject and now that you are in computer world need that same environment this is the tool for you. On the other hand if you are like me and the those multifaceted things did absolutely nothing for you in high school, it isn’t going to help now either.

Even still Yojimbo still has room to grow. Here are a few suggestions that I have come up with. First and for most Automator actions, this list could be a lot longer but as long as they add in a few Automator actions I am sure I could do it myself. Own Smart collections right now it is limited to Flagged Items and Recent Items. and you can create Tag Collections. I would really like to be able create collections based on any field similar to iTunes. Tag Collection Auto Drops – be able to add Tag Collections to the Auto Drop so that when used it will automatically add those tags to the new item. Support for images, not talking iPhoto style organization, more along the lines of that is a really neat image I might want to use that in my blog. .Mac Access online, syncing is nice but online access would be awesome especially for bookmarks. Dashboard Widget – despise the fact that I always have to have Yojimbo open would love a Dashboard Widget. Oh please, oh please, oh please develop an iPhone version. Multiple Flags similar to Outlook alarm red is nice but caution yellow, don’t worry green or handled it check mark would be nice. And finally more options or ability to create your own types like Wallet. I really want to create a grocery items type.

If you own a mac take a look at Yojimbo, if you own multiple macs and have a .Mac Account Get Yojimbo.

AJSPS

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