- Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Tool
- Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Pdf
- Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Template
Developer: Bare Bones Software
XOrganizer helps you organize your X-Plane installation, in such a way that you exactly see and experience the content (scenery, plugins/scripts, preferences and aircraft) you want when you run X-Plane. XOrganizer will read any linked content, but will not by itself look outside the actual X-Plane folder. Data input into Yojimbo follows familiar Mac user interface gestures such as copy-and-paste, drag-and-drop, a Quick Input Panel, or PDF Services from the Print menu. Searching and retrieval are instantaneous, using either Yojimbo's built-in search, or the Spotlight search system in OS X. PAX Arena Invitational is a tournament hosted by PAX Arena which is a part of the IGNITION SERIES. Freeform note-taking organizer. Planz: Windows MIT Provides a single, integrative document-like view of personal information as an overlay to the user's file system. Plaxo: Web Commercial Remember the Milk: Web Freemium: Tabbles: Windows Freemium: Tagging and auto-tagging of files, emails and bookmarks. Yojimbo is an effortless and highly reliable information organizer for Mac users designed to help them keep tabs on large collections of data with little to no effort on their part. Yojimbo 4 for Mac Review Yojimbo is a handy tool that aids macOS user.
Price: $39 (individual); $69 (family); $29 (educational)
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.3. Universal.
Recommended: .Mac account (to sync multiple computers).
Trial: Fully-featured (30 days)
It has been said that information is power. In the past, the challengewas physically locating the information. Today, however, people haverelatively easy access to more information than at any previous pointin human history; thus, the challenge has shifted from finding tomanaging that information. This trend can be seen by looking at theevolution of the Find functionality built into various versions of theMac OS—from System 7's basic Find command to Sherlock 1.0 to Tiger'sSpotlight. Additionally, several other programs have appearedthroughout the years to simplify this management task.
Yojimbo, from Bare Bones Software, is one of the latest entries intothis field. It features a clean user interface with several nicetiesdesigned to simplify adding information to Yojimbo. This simplicity,however, leads to several shortcomings that keep the application fromreaching its full potential.
Information Management
A quick glance is all it takes to notice Mail's influence on Yojimbo'sinterface—Yojimbo features the now-ubiquitous three-pane interface and ismore likely to be confused with Apple's bundled e-mail application thanwith Mailsmith, theother Bare Bones product with a three-pane layout. The application lookslike a new OS X application and makes use of colored buttons and iconswhere appropriate to increase usability.
Yojimbo allows you to store several different types of information:Notes, Web Archives, PDF Archives, Bookmarks, Passwords, and SerialNumbers. The latter two are specific to Yojimbo, but the other datatypes are analogous to files you could store in the Finder. That beingsaid, Yojimbo does not directly interface with actual files you havesaved on your hard drive—if you add such a file to Yojimbo, a copy iscreated in Yojimbo's database. Changes to the file in Yojimbo do notget propagated back to the original file, or vice-versa. There is aworkaround for linking to existing files: the Notes editor allows youto insert hyperlinks into your document. This feature is obviouslyintended for adding things like Web links or e-mail addresses, but youcan opt for linking to files on your hard drive. Simply drag thedesired file to the text field in the Edit Link… dialog and add'file://' to the beginning of the file path. Clicking the resultinglink will open the file in the appropriate application.
One data type whose support seems to be strangely lacking is images. Motionartist 1 2 – develop amazing interactive comics. If you tryto drag an image Yojimbo, nothing happens. It's not that you can't addimages to Yojimbo, but it takes a few more steps. You either need tocreate a new Note and drag the image to the note's body, which allowsyou to add commentary to the picture, add it as Web Archive by openingthe image in Safari, or add it as a PDF using OS X's PDF Services.While effective, these workarounds seem out of place when compared tohow seamless it is to add other data types to Yojimbo.
Most data types behave as you would expect. Notes have essentially thesame features as any TextEdit document, including basic outlining tools(Option-Tab activates the outliner). Some people were surprised thatYojimbo lacked an 'Edit in BBEdit' command, but the omission makessense since Yojimbo works with styled text and BBEdit is plain text–only.
Bookmarks also operate as you would expect. The only twist on standardbookmarking tools built-in to most Web browsers is the inclusion of a'Move to trash after opening' button. Thus, if you're only creating abookmark as a reminder for a site you need to visit once, you don'tneed to manually remove the bookmark when you're done with it.
Yojimbo natively includes the ability to view all the data types itsupports, though Safari and Preview offer features beyond those offeredby Yojimbo. For instance, Yojimbo only offers basic page controls fornavigating PDFs. You can jump to the next and previous pages or forwardand backwards through the pages you've viewed, but you can't jump to aspecific page, quickly tell how many pages are in a PDF, or view a PDF'stable of contents.
Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Tool
Fortunately, Yojimbo includes the ability to pass these archives off totheir native viewers, giving you access to a fuller set of features.This functionality is view-only, however. If you modify a PDF usingPreview (perhaps by adding annotations), these modifications will notappear in Yojimbo.
Web Archives always open in Safari, even if you've selected a browserlike Firefox, OmniWeb, or Camino as your default browser. This isbecause Web Archives are created using Apple's Web Kit and cannot beprocessed by non–Web Kit–based browsers. Instead of saying 'WebArchives can be viewed in browsers A, B, and D but not C and E,' theproduct designers decided to simplify matters by requiring Safari.
I've noticed several quirks when working with Web Archives over time,though the functionality is greatly improved over the original 1.0release. One known issue is that certain banner ads appear twice.Another is that when I view certain Web Archives in Safari, they loadincorrectly. This may be due to the archives originally referencingpages which were password protected; I suspect Safari may be trying toreload certain page components from the password-protected sourceinstead of using the images stored within the Web Archive, but I couldbe wrong. These same Web Archives load fine within Yojimbo.
Depending on what you store in Yojimbo, you may want to keep pryingeyes away from your data. Fortunately, Yojimbo allows you to encryptmost everything it stores, with the exception of serial numbers.
Organizational Skills
Yojimbo has several features designed to aid in organizing your data.The first is the use of Collections. Collections are essentiallyfolders that exist within Yojimbo. There are two key differencesbetween Collections and folders. First, an item can be added to severalcollections, whereas Finder objects can only appear in a single folder.The second difference is that Collections cannot be nested—you cannotcreate a Collection for projects, then create sub-Collections for theindividual projects.
Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Pdf
Yojimbo also includes several predefined Smart Collections. These SmartCollections fall into two categories: Smart Collections for eachindividual data type (though Web Archives and PDF Archives are combinedinto a single Archive Smart Collection) and Smart Collections based onitem metadata. The latter type of Smart Collections include acollection of flagged items, recently added items, and unfiled items.
Oddly, Yojimbo does not include the ability to create user-definedSmart Collections. Though Bare Bones has promised to add this featurein a future release, the omission is quite glaring.
Two other organizational tools are Labels and Comments. Both of thesefeatures behave essentially the same as their counterparts in theFinder, though Yojimbo uses a more sensible UI for selecting an item'slabel.
To make up for the lack of nested Collections (and, to some degree,user-defined Smart Collections), Yojimbo includes search functionality.You can choose to search the entirety of your collected dataagainst a single attribute. Searching is fairly instantaneous, unlessyou're searching against the content of a number of items. The searchinterface is the standard toolbar search field. There is no advancedsearch functionality built into Yojimbo; this means you cannot searchfor all documents that reference meeting notes and are labeled Urgent.
Yojimbo 4 0 4 – Data Information Organizer Template
Yojimbo also supports Spotlight, so you can theoretically use thatinterface to build more complex searches. In my experience, though,Spotlight searches can be a bit unreliable. For instance, a search for'Yojimbo NetNewsWire'happily returns a reference to my NetNewsWire serial number.Conversely, a search for 'Yojimbo SuperDuper' doesn't find either of myYojimbo items that contain SuperDuper in the name.
Interacting with Yojimbo
One of the goals in designing Yojimbo was to make it as easy aspossible to get as much of your information into Yojimbo as possible(which is another reason why the methods for adding images seem strange).As such, Yojimbo includes several methods for accomplishing this.
The most obvious approaches involve the main Yojimbo interface. You caneither use any of the five New… commands to create the appropriate itemin Yojimbo. Additionally, you can drag and drop any valid source (asupported file type or URL) to the Yojimbo window. Dropping the item ona Collection will add that item to said Collection.
Yojimbo's Drop Dock is another option for adding items to Yojimbo. Ifyou've enabled the Drop Dock, a Yojimbo tab appears in the specifiedlocation. Clicking or dragging a valid source onto the tab expands thedrawer, allowing you to add the item to your Library or to a specificCollection. To remain unobtrusive, Yojimbo allows you to specify thesize, location, and transparency of the Drop Dock. My only complaintabout the Drop Dock is that it only responds to the mouse—I can'tdismiss it by pressing the Escape key.
Another method of adding items to Yojimbo is the Quick Input Panel.Essentially, the Quick Input Panel is the Drop Dock for items you can'tdrag. Triggered by a user-definable hot key, the Quick Input Panelallows you to quickly create Notes, Bookmarks, Passwords, SerialNumbers, and Web Archives. If you have text on your clipboard, the QuickInput Panel will attempt to use this data intelligently depending onthe type of item you are creating. Unlike the Drop Dock, though, thereis no way to automatically add the new item to a collection.
Quick Input Panel
If none of these methods meets your needs, Yojimbo's support for PDFServices may help. After installing Yojimbo, a 'Save PDF in Yojimbo'item appears in the Print dialog's PDF pop-up menu. Selecting thisoption 'prints' your document to a PDF and adds the PDF to Yojimbo. Ioften use this feature to add PowerPoint presentations to my Yojimbolibrary. Depending on the application and the Page Setup options foryour printer, the resulting Yojimbo item may or may not be a perfectmatch for the source document.
Finally, if your workflow has additional requirements which are notsatisfied by any of the preceding methods, Yojimbo offers a limitedAppleScript dictionary which allows you to create new Yojimbo items.I've made use of this functionality to add Web Archives for sites whichrequire require passwords to view their content—simply passing the URLto Yojimbo created a Web Archive for the login screen instead of forthe desired article.
Syncing
One of Yojimbo's main features is that it supports syncing via .Mac.Syncing allows you to keep the same content on multiple copies ofYojimbo. The emphasis on syncing is shown by Yojimbo's licensing terms:both the Individual User and Family Plan licenses allow you to installYojimbo on multiple computers; only the low-cost Educational Licenselimits you to one computer. Thus, you can access your Yojimbo data at homeand at the office or share the same data among multiple users.
Since I only have a single Mac at this point, I haven't been able toexperiment much with syncing multiple computers. However, I have beensyncing my Yojimbo data to my .Mac account. Although I'm not accessingthe data for anything, my .Mac account acts as an offsite backup for myYojimbo database in case disaster strikes.
One limitation of syncing is that data is shared at the .Mac accountlevel. My understanding is that if you have one .Mac account for yourfamily and you enable syncing, everybody using that .Mac account willshare the same Yojimbo data.
Wrap Up
If none of these methods meets your needs, Yojimbo's support for PDFServices may help. After installing Yojimbo, a 'Save PDF in Yojimbo'item appears in the Print dialog's PDF pop-up menu. Selecting thisoption 'prints' your document to a PDF and adds the PDF to Yojimbo. Ioften use this feature to add PowerPoint presentations to my Yojimbolibrary. Depending on the application and the Page Setup options foryour printer, the resulting Yojimbo item may or may not be a perfectmatch for the source document.
Finally, if your workflow has additional requirements which are notsatisfied by any of the preceding methods, Yojimbo offers a limitedAppleScript dictionary which allows you to create new Yojimbo items.I've made use of this functionality to add Web Archives for sites whichrequire require passwords to view their content—simply passing the URLto Yojimbo created a Web Archive for the login screen instead of forthe desired article.
Syncing
One of Yojimbo's main features is that it supports syncing via .Mac.Syncing allows you to keep the same content on multiple copies ofYojimbo. The emphasis on syncing is shown by Yojimbo's licensing terms:both the Individual User and Family Plan licenses allow you to installYojimbo on multiple computers; only the low-cost Educational Licenselimits you to one computer. Thus, you can access your Yojimbo data at homeand at the office or share the same data among multiple users.
Since I only have a single Mac at this point, I haven't been able toexperiment much with syncing multiple computers. However, I have beensyncing my Yojimbo data to my .Mac account. Although I'm not accessingthe data for anything, my .Mac account acts as an offsite backup for myYojimbo database in case disaster strikes.
One limitation of syncing is that data is shared at the .Mac accountlevel. My understanding is that if you have one .Mac account for yourfamily and you enable syncing, everybody using that .Mac account willshare the same Yojimbo data.
Wrap Up
Over the years, I tried several approaches to organizing theinformation on my computer. I used complex folder hierarchies in theFinder. Compress 1 0 1 – image compression sleeves. I tried several different pieces of software. The Finderapproach relied on multiple programs and required a significantinvestment in setup time. I never found any software that I fell inlove with over the long term.
That changed when I found Yojimbo. It does the job I need withoutgetting in the way. Obviously, the application is still a work inprogress, lacking the obvious user-defined Smart Collection and othersmaller features, but there's nothing I consider show-stopping whenweighed against the time and energy Yojimbo has saved me over the pastseveral months.
Copyright © 2006 Eric Blair, eblair@atpm.com. Reviewing in ATPMis open to anyone. If you're interested, write to us atreviews@atpm.com.
