Yojimbo - a 30 second review

Bare Bones software released Yojimbo today. As I'm in the market for some better ways of keeping track of information I thought I'd jump in for a test drive.

Upon opening the disk image containing the application the elegance of Bare Bones simple design jumps out at the user. Instead of just having text telling the user to drag the application to the Applications folder the disk image contains an alias pointing to the main Applications folder.

From there it's time to test out the product's web page claim "It's so simple, there is no learning curve." It seems to be true. A quick gander at the preferences let's one know that F8 will bring up a quick add window and F7 shows the tab that can be positioned around the screen to allow quick access to add information to different folders. All and all quite slick.

The ability to color-code and label things will be quite handy. It would be nice to have an additional field on each item so any item can be marked "completed". This is possible to handle with the labels, but requires one to setup an archive label for filing completed items. Also the choice of using .Mac sync services unfortunately leaves those of use dependent upon DirecWAY for internet connections out in the cold. However it must be judged to be a small portion of the potential audience.

Immediately out of the box Yojimbo feels much snappier and more intuitive than SOHO Notes or Sticky Brain that generally fit into the same niche. Yojimbo is a great program and has lots of potential looking ahead. One can just hope that this move may portend Bare Bones entry into the vast wasteland of synchronized multi-user personal information managers on the platform as well.

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