Yojimbo is an application to help you organise all those little but important scraps of information you wish to remember at some point, like passwords, serial numbers and order confirmations.
It stores URLs, web archives, passwords, notes, PDF documents and serial numbers and can encrypt that content. You can enter information by hand, but you can also copy to clipboard what you want to store (say, an URL or serial number) in your e-mail client or browser and press F8.
Yojimbo figures out what you have copied and shows you an entry box where you can change the title and add tags if you want to. It can also store PDF documents. When I receive an order confirmation by mail, or in my browser, I just print it as PDF to Yojimbo. That’s a new option in the standard print dialog.
What I like about Yojimbo is the ease of use, and the integration with Mac OSX. It has a nice interface, it groups by type (Password, Serial Number, …) and you can have “smart folders” based on your tags.
Security also seems pretty good. You can encrypt almost all content, and there is an option which makes it forget the password after a single decryption, or encryption. Though this sounds inconvenient, it allows you to walk away from your Mac for a few minutes without anyone peeking at your passwords.
Yojimbo adds an item to the standard Print dialog, Save PDF to Yojimbo, which immediately adds the item (as pdf) to Yojimbo. Very convenient for purchase confirmation mails or web pages. Web pages can be stored as web archives which don’t change when the website does.
Yojimbo is a commercial application made by BareBones software. They have a nice demo movie accessible via the Help menu, and a 30 day fully functional trial. It’s $39 which I never thought I would pay for such a “simple” application, but I haven’t regretted it yet.
Have a try, and tell me your experiences!
June 11th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
That sounds like an interesting application Leon. I don’t know if I would pay $39 for it though but that’s what free trials are for I suppose
June 11th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
The ability to encrypt the entries with 1 click makes it worth the €30. I used to have dozens of little text files with reminders, but Yojimbo makes things much more organised.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
That’s also what impressed me; it doesn’t do any magic but it’s well thought out and really convenient to use.