Yojimbo review « The BEST Apple Hardware and Software Reviews

Written By Editor December 4th, 2009

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Its about time that information storage became easy. This is something we say almost everyday.

It’s the lack of ‘information’ storage that leaves our desk looking like something out of a disaster movie. Thankfully, 1 developer has stepped up to the plate and decided to create the most awesome information organizer in the world. Step in Yojimbo, by the makers of BBEdit and TextWrangler.

So what is Yojimbo?

Yojimbo makes keeping all the small (or even large) bits of information that pour in every day organized and accessible. It’s so simple, there is no learning curve. Yojimbo’s mechanism for collecting, storing and finding information is so natural and effortless, it will change your life, without changing the way you work.

In other words, you know that file you have on your mac, that gets maltreated, stuffed full of random and unrelated items? Yojimbo is going to mop all that mess up, and like it!

Getting going

BB pitch Yojimbo as effortless. So lets see how easy it is. First-up the app invites you to watch a video. This little tutorial gives you an ultra-quick (and ultra-understandable) cookie cutter guide to Yojimbo. It helps you get to grips with the most important features, such as saving webpages and printing pdfs to Yojimbo. This is a very nice addition and is infinitely more interesting than reading through a 2070 page manual thicker than the bible even in digital form. So in terms of actually ‘getting’ the program your looking at the time it takes to watch a humble video. Brilliant!

Yojimbo video clear, simple instructions!

As soon as you install, you get a Yojimbo Dock, to facilitate quick, drag and drop saving. This looks very nice, and yet doesn’t interfere with day-to-day running. The dock will hover over open apps, which means its never out of reach, and takes up little screen space.

The Yojimbo Dock shut. Knock knock…..

Oh, its the awesome looking yojimbo dock. You may have noticed that we have no icons here? That’s because the dock floats to the right and as we have a dual screen (44inch combined) set-up, its completely out of our way.

So, what can you feed Yojimbo?

Notes- Copy text from anywhere and paste it into a Yojimbo Note.

Bookmarks -Save a bookmark for later use.

Images – Collect images, like comic strips, icons, screenshots, and other things that don’t belong in iPhoto.

Passwords -Store passwords, credit card numbers, even your bank personal identification number (PIN).

PDFs -Print anything to Yojimbo, where it will be stored as a search able PDF.

Serial Numbers- Record all your software license codes, hardware serial numbers, or any other numbers you need to keep track of.

Web Archives -Create a permanent copy of a web page by saving it as a Web Archive.

Interface

If you read our reviews often, you’ll note I am a little bit of a design . interface nut. I love it! And Yojimbo leads the field here. It reminds me very much of a mail client in terms of layout. Whether this is intentional as most people know their mail client better than the back of their hand or note I don’t know. Still. Here’s the app in all it’s awesome glory:

The interface works brilliant! So simple, so easy. You can’t ask for more (or less).

Features and usage

Making a jimbo is as easy as dragging an item to your dock, or hitting F8. Simple. Saving a full web page is easy as hitting Print, then saving to Yojimbo, whereupon it becomes a Yojimbo archived site, for you to visit later – with or without Internet connection!

Printing an saving this webpage to Yojimbo.

Whereupon the app makes it available any time you want, on a plane or in the only cafe in the world without Internet access….

Yojimbo also stores images and bookmarks. Which is handy.

Bookmark saving….

Conclusion

Yojimbo is awesome! It’s one of the best apps I’ve personally reviewed all year and you’ll know from following the site that’s at least 50 or so. The interface is perfect, the features are awesome. This app is truly useful too! I’ll be happily using this app for some time, in the hope it might clear my desk up a smidge.If your a writer, developer, designer or power user…. hang on, if you use the Mac, this app will prove incredibly useful to you and will go a long way to abolishing that “Random bits and bobs” file you used to have.

Yojimbo is available for $39 from http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/