Review: Yojimbo gets more useful with version 1.5
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Dec 6, 2007 at 5:15am
When Yojimbo, Bare Bones’ information organizer, was first released, I found it to be a useful, but not a must-have item. That’s changing with every incremental update and the latest (1.5) is the most tantalizing version of the software so far.
Yojimbo (named after the 1961 Samurai classic film by Akia Kurosawa) stores different data types: text notes, passwords, Web bookmarks, product serial numbers, PDFs and web archives. And as of version 1.5, image files, something that’s overdue.
Data input into Yojimbo follows familiar Mac user interface gestures such as copy-and-paste, drag-and-drop, a Quick Input Panel (a very convenient feature) or PDF Services from the Print menu. In other words, it’s a breeze to use; you can install it and get up and going with its basic features immediately.
Another nice touch to the software is its integration with other Mac OS X technologies. Searching and retrieval can be accomplished via either Yojimbo’s built-in search or the Spotlight search system in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 (Yojimbo 1.5 is Leopard ready). The Core Data frameworks are used for storing info. Support for Mac OS X’s Sync Services synchronization provides data portability for .Mac account holders. Yojimbo also takes advantage of several Tiger-only technologies, such as Sync Services to provide synchronization across multiple computers for .Mac participants—which means it’s location independent.
Another thing I like is Yojimbo’s encryption subsystem that lets you encrypt data for storage. You can encrypt and decrypt individual items, and Yojimbo encrypts data using the secure AES-256 algorithm standard. Its storage system allows for additional, personally-defined organization of data. What’s more, I like the user interface and the ability to assign custom icons to collection folders.
Yojimbo’s “Copy Item Link” command—which enables Yojimbo customers to place links to Yojimbo items in other applications, such as iCal—is very handy. As is the ability to tag for grouping and retrieving items stored in Yojimbo.
Yojimbo 1.5 enhances the software’s searching and filtering performance. For example, Spotlight search results are more complete, thanks to the indexing of additional item properties, including tags.
I’d still like the ability to more easily move data between applications. And I’d like Yojimbo to sync between original items and their copies when they’re added to the database.
Yojimbo 1.5 requires Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later. For more information on Yojimbo, or to download a fully functional demo version, go here. It costs US$39 for a single-user license, US$69 for a family-pack license (up to five people in a single household) or US$29 for an educational license for a single academic customer on one computer.
Macsimum rating: 7.5 out of 10.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
zahadum Says:
could u pls change the style-guide for your web pages so that the url to the product is not embedded inside the body of the article - especially when using a colour that is similar to the ‘recent articles’ navbar - the human eye will not quickly spot one word amongst hundreds of other words (in the navbar).
i suggest that external links for a product belong grouped together with other metadata about the product (such its review score at the bottom of the article; the surrounding whitespace also is a useful delimiter).
Posted on December 07, 2007