I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together.

Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults.

Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me.

Read on for more power tools and tips.

I've got a basement full of Macs in various states of repair, which shouldn't surprise you. One of my hobbies is re-purposing those old machines. For instance, there's a G3 All-In-One on my workbench which runs iFixIt.com when I've got a project. Additionally, I use a G4 iMac as a Daylite server.

I've also had a G5 iMac for a while, but nothing for it to do. Earlier this week, I gave it a fresh install of Mac OS 10.4 and thought I'd use it for blogging and other writing. No web browsing, Twitter, iPhoto or the like. Call it a "Writing Mac." Here's how I set it up.

Reduce distractions

The Dock and drives are hidden from the Finder. No Twitter clients are installed, and only a few bookmarks are in place. The home folder contains only the default items and there's no music in the iTunes library. In other words, there's nothing to compete for my attention.

Streamlined for work

I've populated the dock with apps that support writing and nothing more. I've moved it to the lower left-hand corner by choosing "Position on screen > Left" from the Dock preference pane and this little bit of command line editing from Shawn Blanc:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end

Now I can have the dock tiny yet accessible as I run my writing software. Speaking of which ...

The software

You'll see a few icons in my Dock. After the Finder and Mail, is Scrivener. If you've got a large writing project to complete, Scrivener is the companion you'll want on your side. Research, outlining and organization is a pleasure with such a great application.

I've also got Apple's Dictionary in the Dock because, believe it or not, 'ol Dave isn't so good with the spelling.

Next is Yojimbo (I had to upgrade to 10.5.7 to get this to run. D'oh!). I only started using this app recently, but I can see the appeal. When running, it puts a small tab on the edge of the desktop. It's easy to drop bits of text, images or URL's in there to use as reference. The good stuff, once reviewed, gets moved into Scrivener.

Finally is my beloved ImageWell for editing images for use here on TUAW. It runs on 10.4 and is just the tool for quick-and-dirty cropping and resizing.

At last, iTunes streams Radio Paradise, my favorite Internet radio station.

The best part is that there's almost nothing to back up (other than Scrivener projects, which I drop in my Dropbox). If this machine's HD croaked tomorrow, I'd be able to pick up where I left off with minimal fuss.

So there you have it, my Writing Mac. Aren't legacy machines fun?

Yojimbo fans, rejoice! 2.0 is finally here!

Waiting for Yojimbo 2.0 has been a bit like being Linus van Pelt waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, but today the patient and faithful have been rewarded.

Yojimbo is a "digital junk drawer" to put all kinds of information: pictures, bookmarks, web archives, regular text, or (its crown jewel for me) that seemingly endless pile of registration codes for software. My favorite feature is the Quick Input Panel which lets me quickly and easily throw things into the "junk drawer" which means that I use it almost without thinking about it. See the Yojimbo Tour for an overview or checkout the introductory movie (QuickTime) if you haven't seen Yojimbo in action.

The 2.0 version brings several new features and improvements, most notably a new "Tag Explorer" which lets you drill down into items you have saved with various tags. (Yojimbo users will also be glad to know that tag management has been improved too.) The Quick Input Panel, Save to Yojimbo, and Drop Dock have also been improved. (See What's new in Yojimbo 2.0 for more.)

Yojimbo used to be one of my favorite and most-often used applications; however, trouble with syncing via .Mac (which neither the Bare Bones excellent support folks nor the .Mac support folks could solve) eventually led me to abandon it. So my first step today was looking at the detailed release notes. I had to read all the way to the bottom to see: "Miscellaneous changes to improve reliability of MobileMe syncing." And there was much rejoicing!

Current users (individual, family, or educational) can upgrade for $20. New licenses are available for $29 (educational), $39 (individual), or $69 (family) through the Bare Bones online store.

UPDATE: Yojimbo 1.5.2 was also released today. If you are using a 1.5.x version of Yojimbo, use the "Check For Updates" feature to download the update.

You've got all your iStuff inside Yojimbo (hands up who loves Yojimbo and I'll count, starting with me), but for some reason you need to get it on to another computer, perhaps one running a different OS. What to do?

This AppleScript takes your entire Yojimbo library (well, everything except the PDFs) and exports it to a Tiddlywiki that you can carry around and view on pretty much any computer.

I say "any computer" but iPhone users shouldn't get too excited just yet. Apparently, the standard Tiddlywiki doesn't display that well on an iPhone.

But, ooh, wait: what do we have here?

Thanks to Jon for the tip.

Well, Merlin, you did ask.

Having listed some imaginary iPhone apps he'd like to see, Merlin Mann asked the world: "What's the iPhone app you crave?" Hmm, let me see now - I've got a little list.

• Avant Go: A fantastic portable newsagent, in which you could download whole chunks of your favourite magazine and newspaper web sites for offline reading. I used to read dozens of articles in Avant Go on my train commutes in and out of London, back in the days when I commuted. It was an absolutely essential app and I'm very much looking forward to it - or something similar - arriving on iPhone.
• Yojimbo or Notational Velocity for iPhone: See yesterday's rant. If this, or something like this, isn't right round the corner, I shall eat my router.
• TextMate or Bean: This is dependent on Apple opening up Bluetooth to other devices in a future software update. If I could use a full-size external keyboard to quickly write text, I'd want a decent editor to write it in.

What iPhone apps are you craving? Let us know in the comments.

A lot of my clients use Yojimbo to securely store their credit card numbers, passwords, and other information. I use it, too, but find it to be a somewhat drab application. On the other hand, Delicious Library is attractive and fun to use, but it isn't really something you'd want to use to store private info. If these two apps mated and had a love child, it would probably look and act a lot like RiftVault.

RiftVault is a new Leopard-only secure vault application from EdgeRift that is currently available in a pre-release version. It looks mahvelous and features 256-bit AES encryption to keep your private stuff from prying eyes. You can store credit card info, frequent flyer account data, passwords, insurance information, or short notes that you don't want to make public. Any document can be dragged into the Safe Deposit Box to be compressed and encrypted. Up to 2 GB of items can be stored in the Safe Deposit Box.

Sound interesting? Download RiftVault for free during the pre-release period, and/or pre-order the release version for $33 -- 33% off of the $49 retail price.

If your note-taking, data-collecting app doesn't agree with you, you've got plenty of options out there; as for me, I'm happy with Yojimbo, and happier now that 1.5 is out. The new version adds images as a full-fledged data type (meaning you can sync pictures via .Mac, although you're warned not to try and replace iPhoto or Aperture) and improves search performance. There's also now an auto-update feature, at long last!

You can get the 10.4 MB download here. Note that the update requires a change to your database structure, so it will back up your existing files before it runs.

Thanks, Dirk.

We've posted on Webjimbo a couple of times before, and now this interesting web-based interface for the snippet manager Yojimbo reaches version 2 and adds an important new feature: an iPhone-specific interface. Basically, Webjimbo turns your Mac into a webserver that allows you to interact with your Yojimbo notes database from across the internet. With the new iPhone interface you can now get full access to your notes from your iPhone or iPod touch. Other new features includes a webjimbo.com hosted redirecting service (since most home users have a dynamic IP address) and, of course, Leopard compatibility. If you use Yojimbo and you're willing to run your Mac all the time, this looks like a good way to get around the Notes syncing hole with the iPhone.

Webjimbo 2.0 is $29.95 and a demo is available. The upgrade is free for registered users. There's also a demo site where you can see how it actually works on both the desktop and iPhone.

We last mentioned Webjimbo when it was in closed beta. Now the clever application that allows you to access your Yojimbo notes over the internet by turning your Mac into a mini web-server has been released. Your notes appear in any web browser in an interface that looks very much like Yojimbo on the desktop. Version 1.0 adds support for passwords and viewing encrypted notes, which was missing in the beta. Also tantalizing is the promise of a future iPhone optimized version ("stay tuned"), which should help make up for the deficiencies of the woeful included Notes application.

The same warnings apply as before. You're only able to edit in plaintext and there are security considerations any time you run your Mac as a server. Nonetheless, if you want access to your Yojimbo notes on the go, Webjimbo could be just the ticket.

Webjimbo is $29.95 and a demo is available.

My Mac life now firmly resides in Yojimbo, the excellent snippet/information manager from Bare Bones. The only problem with this arises when I'm away from my home computer. Of course Yojimbo does offer .mac syncing, but that doesn't always work that well and sometimes I'd like access to my information from a public or friend's computer. Developer Adrian Ross must have been been in such a situation as he is now working on a way to access Yojimbo notes from across the Internet. His Webjimbo software basically turns your Mac into a specialized web server that allows you to access your Yojimbo notes in a browser from any Internet connected computer.

When you point your browser to port 8888 you'll actually get something that looks a lot like Yojimbo right in your browser (as you can see above). You can see your folders, search for notes, create new notes, etc. Unfortunately, there are some limitations. "Note editing is plain text only. You can view formatted notes (including attachments), but if you edit them formatting and attachments will be lost." Further, encrypted notes are not be accessible.

How useful you find this will of course depend on your willingness to keep your Mac on all the time. It's also necessary to point out that anytime you run a server you open yourself to potential security concerns. Nonetheless, Webjimbo looks like an impressive project. As of right now it's in closed beta, but Adrian is inviting testers to contact him for an invitation. Webjimbo will be shareware when it ships, but no pricing has yet been announced.

As a Palm user I've been jealous ever since Missing Sync for Windows Mobile added support for syncing notes from Yojimbo last year. Fortunately, Mark/Space has finally stepped up to the plate and the newly released version 6.0 of Missing Sync for Palm adds Yojimbo syncing as well (Mark/Space's own Notebook and Entourage 2004 are also supported for notes). Other new features include some Treo specific features for importing video as well as the Treo's SMS message history. Also new is video encoding support. All in all this looks like a substantial upgrade for Palm users, particularly those with Treos.

The Missing Sync for Palm OS is $39.95 and an upgrade from the previous version is $24.95.

SOHO Notes, the information manager/junk drawer application from Chronos, has hit version 6 and adds some nice new features. Perhaps in response to Yojimbo, there is new keyword and smart folder functionality. There's also new support for scanning directly into SOHO Notes a la Yep, as well as new custom forms for data entry and 256-bit encryption.

I used SOHO Notes' predecessor, StickyBrain, before switching over to Yojimbo. While I prefer the latter for its use of Core Data instead of OpenBase, I do think Chronos does a very good job of seeing what sort of features its competitors are offering and integrating them into SOHO Notes, making it one of the most full-featured of the note-taking applications on the Mac.

SOHO Notes 6.0 is $39.99 ($25 for upgrades from previous versions, including StickyBrain) and a demo is available.

[via MacMinute]

[Update 2: The direct download link is working fine now, and I pinged the iTunes Store to check our podcast feed again, so it'll take a little time for them The iTunes Store feed has updated so we're good to go. I hope you enjoy the podcast - and of course Journler if you give it a whirl - and please leave feedback as I hope to make a lot more of these in the future (with podcast releases going far more smoothly, of course). Thanks again for your patience.]

This week's podcast is a screencast of an app that I finally 'get' and have subsequently gone nutty for: Philip Dow's Journler. It's an app very much like Yojimbo, Mori and SOHO Notes in that it's a journal/digital junk drawer for your work and life. For roughly fifteen minutes I cover some of the coolest features in Journler that both grabbed my personal attention and caused me to chose Mr. Dow's excellent app as my new blogging tool of choice for penning most of my TUAW and Download Squad posts.

As usual you can pick up a copy of our latest podcast (weighing in at 36MB and 13 minutes on the dot) from our iTunes Store Podcast directory, this direct link or our own podcast rss feed. I'm also please to announce that I finally did some research into why my previous video screencasts weren't iPod-friendly and have fixed the issue. Even though this particular screencast might look a little tiny on a 5G iPod (I captured the entirety of my 1440 x 900 MacBook Pro display, then re-sized to 640 x 398 for this one), you should nevertheless be able to take it with you on that commute you're packing up for. Enjoy!

[Update: We are indeed having trouble serving the podcast at the moment. Hang in there, we'll get this fixed as soon as possible and I'll update this post once we stamp out the issue. Sorry for the trouble.]

TUAW reader Chris Roberts was right: it's been far too long since our last post in The Little Things series, so I figured I'd pick up the slack with a really handy feature of Mac OS X: drag and drop. Sure, most OSes these days can drag and drop at least some things, but Apple has gone to great lengths to build this workflow-enhancing feature into so many facets of Mac OS X's experience, I don't really have time to cover them all (and there's no doubt that I don't even know about them all). Take my screenshot for example: I'm dragging an image of our puppy out of iPhoto on the left into iChat's icon well on the right. A simple gesture, sure, but a tiny example of how powerful this functionality can become. Try a few of these other drag and drop operations on for size:

• Drag a file onto an app's icon in the Finder or Dock; its icon should darken, signifying that it can handle whatever you're throwing at it. Hold the Command key to force an app to open a file if it isn't initially cooperating.
  
• Drag images from a browser (except Firefox and Camino) into a Mail message or iChat window to easily share them; no clunky 'right-click, Save, Open' workflows here.
• Pause a QuickTime movie, click on the video and drag out to the desktop to create an instant snapshot of the frame you paused on (this might only work in QuickTime Pro - can anyone verify?).
• Drag a file onto a Terminal window to instantly create a path.
• Highlight text in most apps, then click and drag it to the desktop to create a text snippet, or into another window (Mail, iChat and Yojimbo are great examples) for a drag 'n drop take on copy/paste.

I'm sure there's a ton more where this came from, so try it on for size or stay tuned to the comments on this post where readers can share their own tricks and tips for dragging and dropping one's way to productive bliss.

I recently was fortunate enough to upgrade to a MacBook Pro, which means my wife can now get her mobile on with a MacBook. After I moved everything over and got to work with the new machine, I noticed some strangeness with Spotlight and Yojimbo: apparently, thanks to some quirk of bits and bytes, Apple's fancy schmancy search wasn't bringing up any of my Yojimbo items. After requesting some support from Bare Bones Software, a most useful employee of theirs shared a handy trick that forced Spotlight to re-index my items. It worked like a charm, and it was simple to pull off.

If you have a 3rd party app that isn't behaving well with Spotlight, you could try surfing to ~/Library/Caches/Metadata. This is where apps, especially database-driven ones that want to be indexed by Spotlight, place cache data in order to make it into search results. For me, simply quitting Yojimbo, tossing out the Yojimbo folder sitting inside that Metadata folder and restarting Yojimbo forced Spotlight to get to work. The little magnifying glass began flowing on and off, and my Yojimbo items were soon appearing in my Spotlight search results just as they should.

Now I don't know if this is the end-all solution to Spotlight indexing issues like this. I only know it worked for me, and judging from the emails that occasionally bounce over the Yojimbo mailing list, I'm not the only one who's ever tangled with Spotlight's indexing quirks. I hope this tip can help you unravel any Spotlight searching issues of your own.