Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Reviews
Get organized: a survey of digital junk drawer apps
A while ago I decided to bring some sanity to the way I do things and organize all my stuff. I'm working on a design thesis in my multimedia undergrad degree, I'm constantly doing research for my blogging work, and I have countless other projects and ideas that were growing in both size and disorganization in my Home folder. When I decided to finally start getting organized, I realized I might not be the only person in this position, and I figured I would turn my research and testing experiences into a post; a sort of survey of what some call 'digital junk drawer' applications.What follows is a pro and con summary of four of the most popular junk drawer apps I looked at, but read this post with a few of my criteria in mind:
- I like keyboard shortcuts. I like them a lot. Being able to highlight a chunk of text in a browser or a PDF I'm reading and hitting a couple of keys to send it to a junk drawer app is far more efficient and less workflow-intrusive than having to use a mouse to drag and drop it to some far corner of my display.
- I decided not to touch apps that employ entirely different paradigms such as the wiki-like VoodooPad; I'm not denying the usefulness of these other ways of working, but adding that entirely new level to this survey would've meant putting this post on the back-burner for longer than I would like.
- I'm using a MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz with 1.5 GB RAM, and while I synced my notes library across these apps to gauge performance 'n all that jazz, my library is a mere 500 notes (URLs, PDFs, etc.) strong, so your mileage may vary.
SOHO Notes (formerly StickyBrain) $39.99
Pros
- Can handle any files (with option of aliases or truly importing into database)
- extensive support for input methods - drag and drop DockNote, keyboard shortcuts for groups or even appending to individual notes, etc. (SOHO Notes doesn't even have to be running)
- nested groups (folders)
- multiple databases
- sharing databases
- seamless .Mac syncing
- Searching - via menubar or a widget (SOHO notes doesn't need to be running)
- audio recording notes
- different and customizable note styles (true Stickies, 'float on top' option, background images, etc.)
- blog integration (though I believe only Blogger-compatible)
- iPod export
- tabbed editing
- Must install its own database server (Mac OS X Tiger includes an SQLite database server, which, for example, Yojimbo uses)
- Doesn't quite feel as Mac OS X-like as the other apps. Needs installer
- Group icons not customizable; must chose from pre-defined list
- Fairly hefty system resource consumption
- not AppleScript-able
Pros
- Can handle many (but not all) file types
- Can index logs from iChat and Yahoo Messenger (though I don't know about the new Yahoo Messenger beta that was just released)
- Export to iPod notes
- Can automatically 'classify' items, Pro version offers more powerful do-it-for-you type features
- Multiple, customizable views
- Automator Actions (Pro)
- Download manager (Pro)
- Dashboard widgets (Pro)
- multiple databases (Pro)
- AppleScript support (Pro)
- Steeper understanding curve of apps surveyed
- very un-Mac OS X-like
- Group icons not customizable at all I stand corrected - sjk commented that group icons, in fact, are customizable, and it sounds like it's a very Finder/Get Info-like task to do so
Pros
- refreshing KISS philosophy
- very Mac OS X-like feel
- Drop Dock option for easy importing into individual groups
- Handy bookmarklets
- To my knowledge, it's somewhat AppleScript-able
- Group icons are completely customizable
- Seamless .Mac syncing
- One of the lowest resource loads of apps surveyed
- KISS philosophy needlessly limits the app in frustrating (sometimes minor) ways
- No nested groups
- Export/sharing/emailing options aren't up to par
- No tabbed editing
Journler - Donationware
Pros
- Can handle any files (with option of aliases or truly importing into database), includes handy 'Resource view' for entries to help track down each relevant file (audio, ZIP, app, PDF, etc.)
- best iLife integration, hands down - incorporates media browser, Address Book browser, one-click video/audio recording, send to iWeb, etc.
- blog integration (via iWeb or various blog APIs)
- Friendly diary/journal-oriented options
- Handy calendar helps keep track of activity
- Adds new import option in system-wide Services menu with keyboard shortcut
- Very well-written, cross-referenced/linked Help file
- Lowest system resources used
- iPod export of individual notes or entire groups/library
- nested groups
- tabbed editing
- favorites bar
- Mentioned only because it's becoming a standard: No syncing options (.Mac, FTP, etc.)
- UI could use a little help; strange use of serif fonts in a few places
- Not many other complaints; I have to admit, I love this app
While I love the pure Mac OS X experience that Yojimbo offers, SOHO Notes and Journler tie in my book at the top of this list. From the perspective of browsing or doing research and using a junk drawer app to toss stuff into, SOHO Notes wins hands-down for offering such extensive options and keyboard shortcuts for importing information and virtually any kind of file. Journler has also won a place in my Dock for offering such a fantastic iLife-infused experience. While SOHO Notes has the industrial strength researching and collecting activities down pat, Journler has the iLife side of the fence covered equally as well.
In terms of performance, responsiveness, speed and searching, all four of these apps felt on par with each other, but as I mentioned earlier: I'm on a pretty fast machine with what is likely a comparatively small library of notes (these apps typically boast the ability to store and index tens of thousands of notes, so my 500 means I'm sitting in the kiddie pool on that front). In addition to searching inside themselves, I believe all of these apps (with the exception of DEVONthink, though I might be wrong) are also searchable from Spotlight.
Obviously, which app you use will be determined by your unique needs and interests, and this list is by no means comprehensive or complete. All of these apps offer more features than I highlighted here, and some of them could easily be deal makers and breakers for you. I simply wanted to inspire those of you who, like me, needed a little help and inspiration to - if I may borrow from BareBone's Yojimbo slogan - "master the onslaught".
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Le Citadin said 9:38PM on 7-11-2006
Since I've started to tag my files and docs with Spotlight comments, I don't need any organizing software...
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Daniel said 2:27AM on 7-12-2006
RE: Devonthink
It does digest most public domain file formats but not MS Office documents. They can only be linked. This of course works as reference but not so well if you are working with the documents...
DT is great to keep snippets and texts. It uses OSX Service menu which is excellent.
I can recommend both, DevonThink Personal and DevonThink Pro.
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sjk said 2:47AM on 7-12-2006
Re: Since I've started to tag my files and docs with Spotlight comments, I don't need any organizing software...
Personally, I wouldn't seriously rely on or recommend Spotlight comments for that purpose since there are too many ways to accidentally lose that information from the .DS_Store files where it's saved. And although I make good use of Spotlight I still don't trust certain results to be consistently accurate. Hopefully system-wide tags and other custom metadata will eventually be as reliably manageable as filenames.
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Matt said 11:15AM on 7-12-2006
I believe you've left out the most important feature of DevonThink Pro--i.e., its very powerful search technology. Yes DT Pro is definitely the industrial strength program--and yes, it's somewhat un-macosx-like. But it has an amazing ability to unearth similar or related files. For me, this makes up for its somewhat clunky interface. Obviously, not everyone's needs are the same. It's perhaps best for those who want to dump a whole bunch of data into a database but don't want to do a huge amount of work organizing it upfront. This would include researchers who have a lot of material to sift through.
If you're just interested in basic organization and searching, I think OSX (especially spotlight, smart folders, and quicksilver tagging) already suffice. But if you have thousands of records and need to discover parallels among them, DT Pro's search features are invaluable.
It seems to me that searching is one of the most important feature of any data-dump application. Anyone want to comment on the search features of the other apps mentioned here?
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jho said 12:50PM on 7-12-2006
yojimbo items turn up in my spotlight searches even when I am not running the app. I tried all of these apps and settled on yojimbo because it is very lightweight and handles urls dragged from firefox correctly. It also uses OSX's built in DB functions instead of reinventing the wheel like stickybrain. On the downside yojimbo does not handle binary files or amages out of the box. For images I just drop into a web browser and save it as webarchive. For binary files I just simply base64 encode them (built into osx openssl) and store them in yojimbo as text files.
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Randy said 3:20PM on 7-12-2006
I started using Journler after reading this article. I like it and think I will continue using it.
After using it for a little bit, I realized that there is a possibility for somebody to make an addin to Mail.App for the same function. After I got Journler all set up it struck me how similar it resembled Mail.App.
It would be nice to have a main folder in Mail.App off of which all your subfolders go for Journler type info - the only real bugaboo I thought of when considering Mail.App as an alternative is that it would be a pain to save entries to the correct folder. If somebody made a plugin to help with this I could use Mail.App just fine. Plus I'd have the added benefit of being able to access my data from anywhere with IMAP. You loose the unlimited size of attachments, but it's a tradeoff I could live with. I suppose the ability to easily link data to an entry and not just save a copy would be good too.
Food for thought.
Randy
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David Wade said 6:25PM on 7-12-2006
Like so many others, I seemed to have tried them all over the years (and paid to register most of them!) Best of the new bunch right now seems to be MyNotes (edging out Mori and Caboodle which can only print a page at a time.) Has anyone else tried it?
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Leland Scott said 12:04AM on 7-14-2006
Like many of you, I've tried nearly all of these personal info manager apps, and none of them is what I'd call "perfect" yet. Of course, it all depends on your needs. DevonThink has become my storage drawer of choice, partly because it's so extensible and partly because it's so versatile. DevonThink has the best integration with Mac OS X services and AppleScript features of any of these, and Devon pioneered use of the print workflow method. No other tool provides more ways of getting content into it than DevonThink. I can mail to it, print to it, use the service menu with it, use the applescript menu, use cut and paste, drag and drop, and since I use the great MailTags with Apple Mail, just a keyboard shortcut is needed to move any mail I like over there. You can use DevonThink as a web browser, as an RSS reader, as a to-do list, etc etc. Did you know you can even use it to "suck up" whole websites? The problem is, you can do so much that the DevonThink interface is mighty confusing for quite a long time.
Someone asked if DevonThink (or Notes) was worth the effort. I've been using it for almost a year now, and I can finally say Yes, it is. However, if you don't have the patience or don't need the large-sized drawers Devon can manage, try one of the others. They all have their limitations. Yojimbo has a wonderful interface, but you can't have more than one-level folders! It just doesn't scale well enough. I also need--and like--being able to put together spreadsheets of data in DevonThink. So far, nothing else does that. Devon's "sheets" are quick and easy and very handy.
I bought VoodooPad at one point, but likewise it just didn't scale and didn't handle word processing/formatting functions well enough to do everything I wanted. There are oodles of other such apps--TopXNotes, Daily VX Journal, iSticky, Xnippets, iData 2, Jotz, Memento, ShelfMenu, Deep Notes, SideNote--and those are just the ones I've tried!
I wonder if Windows users have as many apps in this category as we Mac users do? I mean, proportionately. They may have the same absolute number, but how about the relative number? Does anybody know? I suspect Mac OS X users have a much wider range and variety of choices in this category than Windows users do... certainly if you include apps like Quicksilver, which can do all of these things by its lonesome (if you know how), I'm sure we do.
I'll probably be writing an article like this one soon... so more about the subject later.
Cheers,
Leland
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Christian said 5:28PM on 7-16-2006
It should be noted that Yojimbo is *quite* slow on older hardware. (Probably not BB's fault but Apple's, ie. Core Data is slow …)
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robert said 12:55PM on 7-19-2006
TiddlyWiki
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jeff said 1:43PM on 7-21-2006
Just to add my DEVONthink 0.02: I own DEVONthink Pro and think it sucks as a "digital junk drawer." The interface needs much work, and the documentation is woefully inadequate. However, it is the most important piece of software I own, and it runs constantly on my machine. I use it as a heavyweight research app. For it's feature set, it is an absolute bargain.
For what you're talking about (competing with Yojimbo, Mori, Journaler, StickyBrain, etc) it's lousy. But that's kinda like comparing InDesign to TextEdit. Sure, they both can make something bold, but... c'mon.
I left StickyBrain after a corrupted DB ate everything: passwords, memories, drafts. Kaput. Ouch. I'm a Mori and VoodooPad user now, and love it.
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Duncan said 1:47AM on 7-24-2006
Great article, but one important consideration for Palm/Treo users was left out: the ability to sync notes to/from your Palm-powered handheld. Sure, Missing Sync comes with a bundled app, but it pales in comparison to any of the apps you review here.
Unless things have changed since I did my own research, SOHO Notes is the only one to offer the ability to sync notes back and forth from the Memo app in Palm handhelds.
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jas said 2:20AM on 7-25-2006
Little Secrets (http://www.mani.de/en/software/macosx/littlesecrets/index.html) is a very simple note taker/password storage.
Organize into nested folders and add comments, links, pix etc. Files get encrypted after specified time interval. Supports service menu. Very low system resources used. Only $9 (7 EUR).
I recommend it to anyone wanting a lightweight program for storing secrets, passwords ideas, notes in secure and encrypted files. And especially as a companion to other apps like Mori, Devon Think, VoodooPad and such.
I hope some small annoyances (like it will open just one of the documents last used) will get addressed i next update.
No affiliation, just a happy user.
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Lee Jenkins said 11:14AM on 9-15-2006
I was wodnering if anyone had come across an application like these that allows for tagging?
I particularily would like this as I often make notes for lyrics or ideas for web design that would have multiple uses or meanings in the case of the lyrics and to be able to search on a 'them' or tag would make find the saved idea much more incisive and useful.,
Anyone got any ideas?
thanks
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