[ginop1]

What are your thoughts on Yojimbo? How does Yojimbo compare to StickyBrain 4, or SOHO Notes? Does the fact that StickyBrain 4/ SOHO Notes uses OpenBase give them an advantage or disadvantage over Yojimbo?

[CatOne]

Yojimbo looks really pretty. And it has some really nice innovations -- the DragThing style tab that hangs wherever you put it, unobtrusively.

It's less functional than StickyBrain, though. A big glaring thing is that you can't nest folders! Though, it does a very good job of importing PDFs, and making them searchable (they're also searchable in Spotlight). Last I used StickyBrain, in version 3.0, it wouldn't let you search the PDFs. I think 4.0 may do this, but I had a couple crashes when I briefly tinkered with 4.0.1. StickyBrain has synch with Palm and iPod built in; I don't know that Yojimbo yet has this.

Yojimbo also has .Mac synching built in, which StickyBrain does not. You have to pay the $70 for SOHO Notes to get this from Chronos, but then it's multi-user (Yojimbo is very much single user).

Yojimbo uses SQLite as the Database. I threw 500 MB of PDFs at it; it handled it with aplomb and was VERY fast. It feels very tight and efficient for a 1.0 application. SOHO Notes uses OpenBase, which can be multi-user. They're both databases, but OpenBase can be multi-user and supports synching, so apps built on it (e.g. SOHO Notes) can leverage these features. SQLite is a database, but not a database management system (meaning, there's no layer that can manage multi-user access), so it's more like a high-speed embedded DB.

All said... you really need to try them both, and see which one works better for you. SB has more features, but you have to decide if they're worth it for you. Also check the support "history" (i.e. read reviews) of Chronos, and take it into account. I found what I thought was a bug in Yojimbo (encountered importing some PDFs), which was in fact a Tiger bug. Their developers replied within 20 minutes, and I had 10 emails back and forth, where we resolved it. VERY helpful -- then again, it's 1.0 and their baby has just seen the world so they could really want to see everyone love it.

One other thing -- you may also want to look at DEVONthink Pro in this space. Feature-wise, its search/archival/scalability is peerless. It's not as pretty, but its filing/outlining/searching capabilities have evolved under 4+ years of HEAVY, HEAVY use and it's one of the most stable apps I've ever used.

[ginop1]

Originally Posted by CatOne

Yojimbo uses SQLite as the Database.

I appreciate your explanation of the two different types of databases.

One other thing -- you may also want to look at DEVONthink Pro in this space.

Funny you should say that as I have been using DEVONthink Pro since it first came on the market. I use Circus Ponies NoteBook for notes and clippings that I do not forsee going into DEVONthink Pro. Between DEVONthink Pro and NoteBook I think my needs are met. However, I am always on the lookout for other note capture applications. I was just wondering about Yojimbo.

[threestain]

I had a quick look at yojimbo and it really does look like a stickybrain-lite to me, is it any cheaper though?

[midwinter]

As a registered user of Stickybrain (and now SOHO Notes) I want one of the following to happen:

1) SOHO Notes to be as fast, responsive and work as flawlessly as Yojimbo

2) Yojimbo to have most of the features of SOHO Notes—especially the contextual menus

As a bonus, I'd like for the following two things to happen:

1) Yojimbo gets a better name. Perhaps something like "Boogersnot."

2) Yojimbo gets a new icon that does not look like a witch on a broom flying past a red moon.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by ginop1

I appreciate your explanation of the two different types of databases.



Funny you should say that as I have been using DEVONthink Pro since it first came on the market. I use Circus Ponies NoteBook for notes and clippings that I do not forsee going into DEVONthink Pro. Between DEVONthink Pro and NoteBook I think my needs are met. However, I am always on the lookout for other note capture applications. I was just wondering about Yojimbo.

LOL. You and I suffer from the same affliction... I use both the same applications, mostly in the same way. And I continue to explore every StickyBrain update and alternatives like Yojimbo and Mori, just because, well, I dunno, maybe the holy grail is out there somewhere

[hyperizer]

I can't believe how many people haven't seen the movie Yojimbo! It's a really famous western-inspired samurai film by the even more famous director Kurosawa.

[kw14]

Yeah...but what does that have to do some karate guy doing a silly kick across a red moon? Samurai != karate

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by kw14

Yeah...but what does that have to do some karate guy doing a silly kick across a red moon? Samurai != karate

More importantly, samurai != document management

[hyperizer]

Yeay, I can't explain the karate guy or what it has to do with document management. You guys have a point!

[midwinter]

If they'd called it "Chuck Norris Fact Manager" it'd have made more sense....

[wr11]

I have tried yojimbo, it's pretty good... but my holly grail is Mori for what I was looking for. I would encourage people to check it out as well, it's not 100% but damn close.

[m a d r a]

i liked the way barebones put an alias to my applications folder inside the yojimbo .dmg, so that i could install the prog by just dragging it onto the alias - a nice touch.

i wasnae so keen on the fact that [thanks little snitch!] yojimbo tried to make six [!] connections to various different web servers after i fired it up - without telling me or asking permission first.

[techtrucker]

I am interested only because I'm a big fan of BareBones...BBEdit is my constant companion. I'm just curious about something: I've seen all these information managers come out and I wonder just how useful they are. I mean, I keep a neat Documents folder with nested folders for various topics, etc. I use OmniOutliner extensively. How have you all benefited from the use of one (or more) of these apps? I'm not flaming, I truly am curious and would love to hear from others as to how they are beneficial. TIA!

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by techtrucker

I am interested only because I'm a big fan of BareBones...BBEdit is my constant companion....

me too - the same reason i was keen to try mailsmith when it first came out. pity that turned out to be a bit of a turkey.

i still havenae played with yojimbo long enough to decide whether it'll become my 'scrapbook/notebook' of choice - after a couple of years of using voodoopad, i just started looking at stickybrain the other day and have now added yojimbo to the mix.

[Tesseract]

I tried out Yojimbo and wasn't especially impressed (nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have any compelling new features I need). I'm gonna keep using VoodooPad Lite for now.

[techtrucker]

How do these apps help you in your daily computing life? I'm a little gun shy about sticking important personal information into a proprietary app...It's strange, I want to, well, WANT one of these apps but so far I fail to see any real benefit.

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by techtrucker

How do these apps help you in your daily computing life? I'm a little gun shy about sticking important personal information into a proprietary app...It's strange, I want to, well, WANT one of these apps but so far I fail to see any real benefit.

Well, I used Stickybrain, and now SOHO Notes (and while SN is borked, Yojimno) for research. I keep snippits of web pages, entire web pages, reams of bookmarks, PDFs of articles, parts of text I've written, and ideas for projects in it.

In SOHO Notes's Palm sync folder, I keep lists of CDs to buy, lists of things to do, gift ideas, notes for things to do when I'm in certain places (e.g. on vacation).

The most useful feature of something like SN for me is that I can select some text in any application, right click on it and send it to SN as an unfiled note.

With that said, Yojimbo is much faster than SN.

[TheAlbinoBowler]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

i wasnae so keen on the fact that [thanks little snitch!] yojimbo tried to make six [!] connections to various different web servers after i fired it up - without telling me or asking permission first.

i'm pretty sure that's because they include a few web page notes in the samples they provide, which are stored as urls and fetched for display. pretty sure there's no foul play involved.

[TheAlbinoBowler]

Originally Posted by m a d r a

i wasnae so keen on the fact that [thanks little snitch!] yojimbo tried to make six [!] connections to various different web servers after i fired it up - without telling me or asking permission first.

i'm pretty sure that's because they include a few web page notes in the samples they provide, which are stored as urls and fetched for display. pretty sure there's no foul play involved.

[TheAlbinoBowler]

awesome board you have here

[TheAlbinoBowler]

triple post pride!

[Cadaver]

Double post.
Time to feed the 'NN database hamster!

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by techtrucker

How do these apps help you in your daily computing life? I'm a little gun shy about sticking important personal information into a proprietary app...It's strange, I want to, well, WANT one of these apps but so far I fail to see any real benefit.

Same here. While my Documents folder isn't quite so tidy (everything that isn't work-related gets dumped in there), I do add plenty of Spotlight-searchable metadata to the items I do drop in. Spotlight so far finds everything I need.
Plus, I built a Finder context menu in Automator that lets me add Spotlight comments via a pop-up dialog box.

[hyperizer]

BTW, the Katana & Sheath icon from PixelPress' "Pixel Feng Shui" is a perfect replacement icon!

[brettcamp]

I'd appreciate it if you Yojimbo and NoteBook users could tell me what those apps (and similar ones) can do that DevonNote (the cheaper, less-feature version of DevonThink) can't do. I use DevonNote for all my info organizing and note taking and web clipping and a good deal of my writing, except for a few things I keep in Stickies for no good reason. Why would I need anything else?

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by brettcamp

I'd appreciate it if you Yojimbo and NoteBook users could tell me what those apps (and similar ones) can do that DevonNote (the cheaper, less-feature version of DevonThink) can't do

Sync.

[TheIceMan]

Ok, I've been messing around a bit with Yojimbo. As a registered user of DEVONthink Pro, I must say that I really like Yojimbo better. While it's true that it does not do movies or jpg quite as well as DEVONthink Pro (you have to set up a new note and embed the pic in it in Yojimbo), it does things cleaner, clearer, and faster. I did a side-by-side comparison of PDF documents displayed in DEVONthink Pro and Yojimbo and found that Yojimbo displayed them in a nicer, clearer way.

Also, I thing that I hated about DEVONthink was the launch time. It took forever to launch (I'm exaggerating of course). But it does take much longer to launch (with the same amount of data) than Yojimbo.

So I'll keep messing with Yojimbo for another 30 days or so until it expires and then decide if I want to buy it. Overall, nicely done.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by TheIceMan

Ok, I've been messing around a bit with Yojimbo. As a registered user of DEVONthink Pro, I must say that I really like Yojimbo better. While it's true that it does not do movies or jpg quite as well as DEVONthink Pro (you have to set up a new note and embed the pic in it in Yojimbo), it does things cleaner, clearer, and faster. I did a side-by-side comparison of PDF documents displayed in DEVONthink Pro and Yojimbo and found that Yojimbo displayed them in a nicer, clearer way.

Also, I thing that I hated about DEVONthink was the launch time. It took forever to launch (I'm exaggerating of course). But it does take much longer to launch (with the same amount of data) than Yojimbo.

So I'll keep messing with Yojimbo for another 30 days or so until it expires and then decide if I want to buy it. Overall, nicely done.

Do you have DEVONthink set to back up the database every time you launch it? That will make a pretty big difference in launch time.. maybe 10 extra seconds... set it to Weekly or something ;-)

[TheIceMan]

CatOne: Thanks for that tip. I think I do. But it's too late since I trashed DEVONthink Pro last night. For now, Yojimbo seems a better and nicer fit for me. I've also tried StickyBrain and Mori. Just something about Yojimbo that feels nicer.

[TheIceMan]

After having it in my dock, I find that I was using it more and more. So with 26 days left in the demo period, I broke down and bought the little guy for $29 Education Discount. I know it sounds crazy since I already have DEVONthink Pro, but I just wasn't using it like I'm using Yojimbo. I love the ability to print any web page as a PDF to Yojimbo directly. Smart. I guess the other organizers were too ugly or too complicated or just too much (overkill) for me. Yojimbo is pretty, simple, and intuitive.

I'm looking forward to upcoming versions.

[threestain]

blimey... I'm even thinking that maybe I should try it instead of stickybrain...

[threestain]

speaking of which...

does anybody know how to create links to folders as opposed to files in stickybrain?

Cheers

[kman42]

Does Yojimbo copy the files (PDFs, Word docs, txt, etc) into its database or just link to them? Can you delete the files from your hard drive after dropping them into Yojimbo? Devonthink had multiple (confusing, at first) options for storing/linking to files.

kman

[neilw]

I'm experimenting with Stickybrain right now, being interested in this sort of app and having chosen that one quasi-arbitrarily. Yojimbo's lack of nested folders seems like a serious problem for me. I'm still in the 30-day trial.

My real issue, though, is that I don't quite have the knack of taking full advantage of this kind of program yet. The Stickybrain documentation describes (for the most part) how the program work, but not so much how to take advantage of it.

Does anyone know of any good documents that describe good ways to use these programs, either Stickybrain in particular or any other?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by kman42

Does Yojimbo copy the files (PDFs, Word docs, txt, etc) into its database or just link to them? Can you delete the files from your hard drive after dropping them into Yojimbo? Devonthink had multiple (confusing, at first) options for storing/linking to files.

kman

Yojimbo imports them into the database, yes.

DevonThink is a bit confusing, but it can import everything as well. DEVONthink Pro 1.1 is a lot better in this regard, and should be available in a few weeks.

[ginop1]

Originally Posted by neilw

Does anyone know of any good documents that describe good ways to use these programs, either Stickybrain in particular or any other?

Try these links:

1) http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Stickybrain

and

2) http://www.macworld.com/2005/04/revi...in34/index.php

[ginop1]

Originally Posted by neilw

Does anyone know of any good documents that describe good ways to use these programs, either Stickybrain in particular or any other?

I do not know if you are into GTD (Getting Things Done), however, if you are, you will want to read the following: StickyBrain and GTD, Part 1 and Part 2

[kman42]

Is SOHO Notes really buggy? Just reading through this thread there seem to be some misgivings about it. I'd really like Palm and .Mac syncing in an information organizer; otherwise, it just won't fit into my workflow. However, I don't want to get involved with a product that doesn't have a decent and responsive developer. The guys at Bare Bones have a wonderful reputation, but I don't know much about the Chronos team. Any comments?

kman

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by kman42

Is SOHO Notes really buggy? Just reading through this thread there seem to be some misgivings about it. I'd really like Palm and .Mac syncing in an information organizer; otherwise, it just won't fit into my workflow. However, I don't want to get involved with a product that doesn't have a decent and responsive developer. The guys at Bare Bones have a wonderful reputation, but I don't know much about the Chronos team. Any comments?

kman

SOHO Notes is fairly buggy, yes. SOHO Office was probably released prematurely -- there are a number of people who are upset with Chronos for shipping the product late and with some bugs. I think there's some merit to it, but there are also some people who love to bash Chronos.

I can only suggest trying it out for the 30-day demo and seeing whether it works for you.

Yojimbo is definitely faster -- depends on whether you need the extra features of SOHO or StickyBrain. For simplicity I'd pick Yojimbo, unless nested groups were 100% mandatory, in which case I'd probably go with DEVONthink.

[wilsonng]

Originally Posted by TheIceMan

A I love the ability to print any web page as a PDF to Yojimbo directly.

You can also print a web page as a PDF to DevonThink Pro as well. There is also the ability to highlight text, go to the Services menu and select "Take Rich Text" command. This will also save into DevonThink pro.

[TheIceMan]

Yojimbo has been used on a regular basis in my dock. It's quick to launch and I love the drop tabs.

[ginop1]

Well, I broke down yesterday and purchased Yojimbo after reading about ten websites regarding Yojimbo compared to its competitor, such as StickyBrain. One of the things that I had not thought of before I read these websites is how one installs these applications. Yojimbo is just a plain drag and drop onto your hard disk. StickyBrain reguires an installer. In the past, I had problems with SticyBrain's installer not catching until the third or fourth time. In other words, I would double-click on the installer, it would go through the process, however, nothing would be installed.

Here are some articles of interest.

Fight: Yojimbo vs StickyBrain,

Yojimbo review,

Out Goes StickyBrain, In Comes Yojimbo.

[TheIceMan]

Here's another review at mac360.

[kman42]

Any word/rumor from BareBones on when we might see some small updates? I don't use BBEdit, but it seems that they update often. In particular, it seems as though nested folders would be a simple and much requested addition. Palm support would also be nifty.

kman

[ginop1]

Originally Posted by kman42

Any word/rumor from BareBones on when we might see some small updates? I don't use BBEdit, but it seems that they update often. In particular, it seems as though nested folders would be a simple and much requested addition. Palm support would also be nifty.

kman

Here is a quote from Patrick Woolsey / Director of Technical Services of Bare Bones Software, Inc.:

"The ability to create one’s own Smart Collections is definitely planned."

More can be read at Yojimbo-bare-bones-new-information-manager

[darcybaston]

I went digging into its database because I worried about how I could get my information out of it should something break, database corrupt a bit etc. When you've got thousands of SEPARATE files, they're harder to lose than when they're all mishmashed together in a database file. I like Yojimbo, but worry about that a lot.

Here are the tables the software uses:

Code:
ZBLOB           ZGROUP          ZLABEL          Z_METADATA    
ZENCRYPTIONKEY  ZITEM           Z_7ITEMS        Z_PRIMARYKEY

ZITEM contains the titles of items, serial numbers and keys pointing to ZBLOB (I think) where binary information is stored.

ZBLOB contains the binary and textual stuff for PDFs, web archives, notes, notes with images etc.

ZLABEL contains information related to label colors and their title

Z_METADATA contains informatoin about the demo's start/end dates, if you've been asked for sample data, if you have default labels defined, etc.

Z_7ITEMS contains what looks like a lookup table specifying what the type is of each item in your library.

Z_PRIMARYKEY contains a lookup for what the 'type' is for an item and its description. I expect this to grow in future versions of the software. Currently the list is:

Code:
1|Blob|0|283
2|NoteBlob|1|0
3|PDFArchiveBlob|1|0
4|WebArchiveBlob|1|0
5|EncryptionKey|0|1
6|Group|0|2
7|FolderGroup|6|0
8|SmartGroup|6|0
9|SyntheticSmartGroup|8|0
10|Library|9|0
11|Trash|9|0
12|Item|0|320
13|Note|12|0
14|Password|12|0
15|PDFArchive|12|0
16|SerialNumber|12|0
17|WebArchive|12|0
18|WebBookmark|12|0
19|Label|0|7

I'm guessing the difference between a blob and non blob type, is if it contains binary data. So if you have a note with just text, it's a Note type. If you have a note that contains an image that you dragged in, it becomes a NoteBlog type. Very nice.

So looking at this, it's safe to say that textual items are easily recovered should a crisis occur. But once binary data from files like PDFs or notes with images in them gets in there, I have no idea how to un-blob and put things back into their own file. I guess if Yojimbo can't export, nobody else can as it has the internal mechanism for it. Fair enough. I've emailed BareBones asking what they have in mind for recovery situations. I look forward to their reply. I'm almost convinced to use this great software.

[darcybaston]

I just noticed Sqlite has an sql dump feature. That way, I can dump all the data as SQL inserts, and import into MySQL to use some PHP to reconstruction functions if I had to. That may be a good recovery approach; at least enough to satisfy this buyer.

[darcybaston]

Yojimbo has crashed twice while I was creating new password items tonight. After about 20 entries or so, I'll go to click in the naming box for a new item and the program quits with a kernel protection failure.

Another issue I found is repeatable. If you rename an item to nothing and try to delete it, the app pops up an ugly developer flavored error dialog.

[techtrucker]

darcybaston, thanks for your in depth research...I am very interested in Yojimbo but am afraid of having my data locked into a proprietary format. Being a developer I've thought about digging into their sqlite setup, but you saved me the time!

Maybe BB can add an option to back up or export data in it's native format??