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.

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about syncing notes, iLife '09, iTunes downloads, the importance of keychains and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.

Scott asks

When I sync my iphone (3.0.1) with my Mac (10.5.8) and have "sync notes" checked in iTunes, I cannot find my notes synced anywhere in Mail.app - including under "Notes"...what am I missing?

To sync 'Notes' first make sure you have your iPhone connected to your Mac with iTunes open. Then, be sure to have "sync notes" checked in iTunes. Also, be sure to check "Sync Notes" in the MobleMe Sync options in System Preferences.

Then, sync your iPhone as normal. After that, check in Apple's Mail program under "Reminders" to see if the notes appear. You need to click on the little triangle to show the contents of Reminders. If they don't appear, close Mail and open it again. Also, restart your iPhone completely before trying another sync.

Also, keep in mind Notes sync works only via USB and not over the air. If you are not seeing notes appear, be sure you sync your iPhone via USB with your Mac or they won't appear at all. If the notes still don't appear in Apple Mail, it might be time to give a call to Apple tech support because at that point the problem may be something larger than the scope of what this column can answer.

Evan asks

I bought a new MacBook Pro last month, which came installed with Leopard and iLife '09. My purchase was within Apple's "Up-to-Date" program timeline, so I was able to order a copy of Snow Leopard for $9.95. I know Snow Leopard doesn't come with iLife '09 but considering my new computer already comes with iLife '09, I'm not going to have to re-buy iLife, am I?

I've been perfecting a very specific efficiency aspect of my workflow: taking notes during Skype calls. I use a Skype-in number as my primary phone number, and -- with permission -- record client calls for future reference. I can't tell you how many times this has come in handy. On long calls, though, going back and finding a specific point where something was mentioned can be a time-consuming hassle. What I wanted was the ability to record a Skype call while taking notes, and to then be able to reference my (abbreviated) notes back to the exact point where they were taken in the conversation.

I've played around extensively with doing this in Pear Note and Transcriva, and both work very well once you get the audio routing right (Soundflower is gold). However, I love taking my notes in a mind map format, and usually create a MindManager map before I start a call. This is especially valuable with long, long calls where keeping things organized and grouped on the fly as the conversation meanders and backtracks can be vital. So I donned my AppleScript hat and started seeing what I could do.

I'm using Audio Hijack Pro and Mindjet MindManager 7 Mac in these scripts. I had these readily available and they both have excellent AppleScript dictionaries, thus were conducive to satisfying my requirements. A little hacking could make these work with a variety of other applications. To set this up in Audio Hijack, I used the default Skype session and had my scripts check to see if we were recording, starting it up if we weren't. From that point, I could add quick bookmarks to my MindManager topics during the conversation. When I read back through my notes, I can instantly play back the associated part of the conversation. Read on to find out how I did it!

To start with: I am a Disney fan -- to be precise, it's a lot like the way Jack Nicholson is a Laker fan -- so on my very nearly annual expeditions to a Disney park, I don't really need the map. I have memorized shortcuts and low-traffic restrooms, how to get all the good stuff done in one day, and loads more random bits (look closely in the Hall Of Presidents; molds for their faces are used on other animatronics around the park), mostly because carrying them around in my head was the easiest way to carry them.

Then I got my iPhone (my first smartphone) and was able to put data on my phone (which I always carry with me). Enter the Walt Disney World Notescast. This $0.99 app is a handy planning/informational tool that can guide your entire Walt Disney World trip, from vacation packages to tips on annual events and park history. I tested the iPhone version of this app, but TimeStream Software also sells a $1.99 version for notes-capable classic iPods and nanos. It doesn't rely on a data connection and you can carry all this info with you easily.

When you first launch the application, you get a list of options to choose from. I liked the variety of options, but I wish I could customize or at least re-order it so I could get at a few of the options more quickly. There is a bookmark system available, but I ended up bookmarking a lot of things so that list went non-functional pretty quickly. And while I understand not having a ton of information on one page, I had a hard time figuring out why there were breaks between, for example, "Tours of EPCOT I" and "Tours of EPCOT II". I love the list of phone numbers, especially since I can tap the number to make the call. In the now cutthroat world of Disney Dining, having that number handy -- as well as the ticket line and even the camping and Magical Express numbers, not usually easy to find on the WDW site -- is a huge convenience.

One thing we don't lack for on the fairer platform is snippet / notes managers. Nonetheless, I always find myself curious about the new applications, perhaps because nothing ever quite gets everything just right. ShoveBox is one of the newer entries in the snippet sweepstakes, and while it has been out on the Mac for a while they've just recently released an companion iPhone app (iTunes link).

ShoveBox's main advantage is its very simple interface. The little ShoveBox icon sits in your menubar waiting for you to drop something on it: URL, text, images, etc. Without any fuss the box opens and accepts your newest shove, ready to be accessed at some later time. My impression is that ShoveBox is best not so much for things you want to keep in the long run (though it will do that), but perhaps more as a scratchpad or an updated and more advanced URLwell.

The iPhone companion app does exactly what you'd expect, giving you access to your notes, etc. on the go. One particularly nifty function is a bookmarklet that allows you to import a website on both the desktop version (from Safari) or the iPhone version (from mobile Safari). So if you're reading something on the go, but want to make sure you save it for later as well, this looks like a great feature.

ShoveBox for Mac is $24.95 and a demo is available; the iPhone version is $3.99 from the iTunes App Store.

If you're looking for a creative application to collect and organize notes, ideas and more, check out Curio. Curio provides a free-form interface for collecting pages which can contain notes, images, links to files, mind maps, sketches -- just about anything you'd need to get ideas and notes out of your head and into your computer.

Zengobi, the makers of Curio, are celebrating the "Back to School" season with TUAW and offering 20% off the academic price of the software. The Pro version retails at $149USD, but it's only $69USD in the academic store. With the discount, students can pick up a great app for about $55USD. Enter TUAWBTS at the academic store to take advantage of the offer, and hurry, it's only good for today (August 27th).

A while back we mentioned that by pressing Command + Option + F that you could make your Stickies float above all other windows. Well, it's time to take this a bit farther.

By pressing Command + Option + T, you can also put your Stickies into transparent mode, so you can see any windows/information that is below the note.

Stickies can be useful for jotting down a quick note, making out a list, or any other daily task that you may find yourself doing -- like checking out TUAW for our great Mac 101 tips and tricks!

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for high school & college-level help.

I covered a few good research tools for students in my last post. Before I dive into some of the excellent writing tools and packages available, we're going to take a look at some methods and applications for putting thoughts, notes and references together in a format that makes the actual writing part much easier.

Whether you're taking notes as you research, collecting documents or actually mapping out the first draft, these tools can be vital for organizing research, overcoming writer's block and making sure that things flow smoothly once writing begins.

A loyal reader recently sent in a tip asking us had we seen a dialog in Mail.app. The dialog in question is produced when creating a new note and pressing command + b. You would expect it to be a shortcut for bold, but no ... it brings up the above dialog.

The dialog specifies that by converting the note to Rich Text, devices such as the iPhone will not be able to edit it. Could this be a sign that notes syncing between iPhone and Mail.app could be coming in the not so distant future? We can only hope so.

Thanks for the tip, Shayan!

Update: As some have mentioned in the comments, iPhone notes syncing was an expected, but not released feature of iPhone 2.0.

Many iPhone users have expressed negative feelings toward the default Marker Felt font used in the Notes application. Personally, I dislike it enough that I used a manual hack on my previously jailbroken phone to get some Helvetica relief, but since I haven't felt the need to jailbreak since the 2.0 upgrade, I've been living with Marker Felt for now. We got a tip today, though, that offers a quasi-solution for those willing to deal with a little extra hassle.

A quick Google search reveals that we're not the first to discover this, but we thought it was worth sharing. If you're interested in trying it, go into the International keyboard settings in the General section of your iPhone or iPod touch Settings and select any of the Chinese keyboards in addition to your current keyboard.

Now, go into an existing note or create a new one in the Notes application. Switch the keyboard to the Chinese keyboard using the globe icon to the left of the spacebar and enter a single character. Backspace it and switch back to your native keyboard. Presto, the note should be free of Marker Felt. Saving the note will reveal that the title in the list has also undergone the same font change, and future edits will maintain it.

Adding new notes will require this little tweak every time, so it's not an all-around solution to the lack of font selection in Notes. If you're really, truly bothered by Marker Felt, however, it's a step in the right direction.

Thanks David!

You got your iPhone. You got your computer. Your emails sync. Your contacts sync. Your calendars sync. Your music, your podcasts, your photos, all your stuff: it just syncs. This is good.

Your notes? They don't sync.

This. Is. Bad.

Not just bad, but actually driving me nuts. It drives me nuts because I can't believe there's a technical challenge to be overcome here. On the iPhone, you have your Notes app in which you write text notes. How hard can it be to sync them up with something on the computer to which the iPhone is attached?

A friend says to me: "Sync them where? With Stickies?" He has a point - there's no obvious, existing place for text notes to go, but again, that doesn't sound to me like something that need be a problem. Let's have a simple desktop app called, um, Notes, with which the iPhone version syncs. OK, even Stickies if we have to. All I want to do is easily reach my iPhone-jotted notes when I'm working on the Mac.

Yes, I know about the work-arounds. I could use a Drafts folder in an IMAP account. I could add notes to a contact. I could just email stuff back and forth to myself. But none of these fits in with the way I work already, all of them are work-arounds. We're talking about text notes here: there shouldn't be any need for work-arounds. I look forward to a simple solution appearing in the App Store soon.

That said, despite the horrible Marker Felt font, I quite like the Notes app. I just wish it would sync. Is that too much to ask?

Those wizards of widgets at iSlayer have come up with yet another really useful tool for the Dashboard. Organized is a free widget with an event calendar, world clock, notes, and to-dos, all of which are synced to iCal and Mail.

As with other iSlayer widgets like iStat menus/nano/pro, it is obvious that a lot of thought went into the design of the user interface for Organized. It packs a lot of data into a very small widget and even has a feature I immediately turned on -- the ability to shut off Marker Felt as the default font for Notes.

If you download, install, and use Organized, consider sending these guys a donation so they'll continue to develop great stuff for us.

It was widely expected but the big Leopard features list page we posted on earlier confirms it: notes syncing of some sort is finally coming to the iPhone. This feature will be integrated into the new Mail.app, and the notes folder will basically be handled like a email mailbox, "so you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC or access them from your iPhone." This will presumably be possible though .mac notes syncing which is also revealed on the page. Unfortunately, however, it looks like Marker Felt is here to stay.

I just hope that some good solution is worked out for integrating these Mail.app notes with other popular snippet applications like Yojimbo, etc.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Bill Palmer sent along this list he put together of all the iPhone features you won't find on the iPod touch. When a lot of people, including myself, first saw the iPod touch, we called it the "iPhone without the phone," because it seemed to pretty much have everything the iPhone had without actually being able to call anyone-- MobileSafari was in there, as was YouTube, Gmail and Yahoo Mail (via the browser). But as Palmer notes, it's not as complete as we first thought.

The EDGE network is probably the most obvious and biggest omission-- the iPhone will let you do what you want from anywhere, while an iPod touch only works where your laptop does (unless you have an EDGE hookup, obviously). The Mail application is missing, as is the Notes application (that one has raised a lot of hackles, too), and Bluetooth is gone as well. There's no camera, volume buttons, or dock. The screen isn't quite as good. And strangely enough, Google Maps, Weather, and Stocks are all missing, too. Those seem so easy to implement, and such big selling points, that you wonder what the story is there.

Palmer doesn't mean to knock the iPod touch-- he says it's still the best iPod ever, and it really is. If someone did a list of features on the video iPod (or even the Classic) vs. the iPod touch, there'd be no contest. But if anyone was really worried that Apple might cannibalize their own iPhone sales by releasing the iPod touch, a feature list like this shows there's a lot less chance of that.