Tagamac

As I discussed in the first part of this series, I often come across information while at work that I want to save or act on later while on my own time (or vice versa). In an attempt to address this need, I set up a personal scratchpad using Together. Sadly, though Together offered some fantastic advantages, its incredibly spotty synchronization with MobileMe eventually convinced me to abandon it in favor of something a bit more involved.

The second solution I turned to, and the one that I have been using and fine-tuning for the last eight months, was VoodooPad. Despite some unique drawbacks of its own, VoodooPad offers near-perfect synchronization, a daily log that far surpasses Together’s in usefulness, and the ability to append text to practically anything. The only downside is that VoodooPad is less flexible about what it can store (and how you can retrieve that info later) because everything is text-based whereas in Together you can toss whatever you want into your scratchpad, be it a PDF, image, bookmark, etc. [read more...]

VoodooPad, that most excellent of desktop wikis, has been updated to version 4.2. This version includes numerous enhancements, one of the best being that the functionality for VoodooPad Pro has been collapsed back into the standard version of VoodooPad. This means that everyone can access event scripts and so forth without needing the more expensive VoodooPad Pro license, while those with simple needs can still use the free lite version.

Other improvements include numerous synching bug fixes, JSTalk support for the programmatic-minded, variables to access clipboard contents for new page templates, and more. For full details, see the release notes. The best part of version 4.2, though, is that thanks to it I can at long last release my custom VoodooPad scratchpad template.

Yojimbo 2.0, the next version of the oh-so-simple file library from Bare Bones Software, was released today. Feature highlights include an improved Quick Input panel, the ability to tag and otherwise categorize PDFs when you “print to Yojimbo”, an improved drop dock with customizable contents and tag collections (that will apply the tags they filter for when you drop an item on them), and scads of improvements to the basic tagging system. Although I knew it was aiming for simplicity, Yojimbo has always felt like it sacrificed too much in an attempt to attain that goal. Tags can now be renamed, combined, and otherwise manipulated through the new tag and label manager. Additionally, instead of creating a collection for every tag Yojimbo now features a “tag explorer” that shows you related tags and allows easy filtering for items across the database.

Yojimbo 2.0 is a $20 upgrade for existing users, and costs $39 for new users. If you purchased Yojimbo on or after January 1, 2009, version 2.0 is a free upgrade. The program now requires OS 10.5.7 or higher (including 10.6). If you’ve been looking for an easy way to store notes, URLs, PDFs, application license information, passwords, and much more without the overhead and complexity of other solutions, Yojimbo has always been a great option, and with version 2.0′s improvements to the tag browsing system, I highly recommend giving Yojimbo’s free 30 day demo a try. For more information about the update, see the release notes.