I don’t think I could love much more.
Everywhere I turn I find more stuff to stick in it.
I suspect most Mac users already know what it is, but for those who don’t, or Windows users, let me explain:
Yojimbo is the place where you put stuff you want to find later. Mostly text. But not just text.
For example, here’s what my web browsing life was like before Yojimbo:
Me: “Hey, that’s a cool page I’ll have to bookmark it so I can find it later.”
Me, later: “Gallopin Geebus, I’ve got 8,472 bookmarks. How am I ever going to remember where anything was?
Me, Yojimboified: “That’s a cool page, I’m going to save that:
F8 (Opera’s command to “go to URL field in browser) cmd+C (copy URL) cmd+f8 (my setting to pull up Yojimbo’s web archive panel) which looks like this:
Now I can just hit Return and it will go and save a copy of the whole page to my Yojimbo archive. It will automatically fill in that “Name” field with the Title of the page.
Oh, and I can stick some keywords in there if I want to. But I don’t have to if I don’t want to.
I can now do this in my sleep: F8, cmd+c, cmd+f8, enter
Boomshallalacka Boomshallalacka boom: the page I want is saved. And I can find it via Spotlight later.
Note how my clever use of keyboard commands means not only do I not have to touch my mouse (eeek!) but by using cmd twice in a row like that, I can just keep it pressed down, so it’s actually:
Press F8, hold down cmd, press c, press F8, press enter.
Boom.
It also means that I no longer need to remember which browser I was using when I found that cool page. If I liked it, it went into Yojimbo.
What else? I use Mapquest a lot, and I like it, but it’s not a particularly fast process. I found that I was looking up directions for the same places that I go to only every couple of months. Boom: print to Yojimbo, switch over, tag it as “directions”.
Wishlist items? I do the same as above, and tag them WISHLIST. Next time a gift-giving occasion comes around and my wife says she doesn’t know what to get me: Boomshallalacka, there’s my list.
Oh but that ain’t the half of it.
Do you know how many pieces of software registration/licenses you have? I have 93. You know where I used to keep them? In my email. You know how easy it was to find them? Not easy. I could do it, but it would take time. Now it’s just a few clicks away. And when I get a new one?
I copy it, press cmd+F8, and Yojimbo goes “Hey, you know what, my super ninja brain realizes that weird thing is probably a license code. Here’s a special sort of note to use just for that.”
Presto whammo, done. Need to reinstall? Need to upgrade? It’s right there. I recently reinstalled OS X and did a clean install. Yojimbo made the process so much smoother by showing me just where everything was. (And OS X made it easier by not requiring me to have a 16 digit code to install OS X, but that’s another story.)
What about those other little things you write down on the backs of envelopes? I put them in Yojimbo. Someone is giving me their phone number. Yeah, I ought to put it in Addressbook, but I don’t have that kind of time right now. cmd+F8, type in their name, tag it “addressbook”, tab, start typing.
It doesn’t really take that much longer than finding a pen, and I’ll have it later when I need it.
I had lunch today at someone’s house who had to give me directions because her house is hard to find. When I made the appointment a few days ago she started giving me directions: cmd+f8, tab, dir[tab] (expands to “directions” as it is the only tag I have that starts “dir”), and tab and then I’m ready for the directions.
5 days later when I’m getting ready to leave, I’m not scrounging around for that scrap of paper, I’m printing the directions that she gave me out of Yojimbo.
I’m getting ready to edit a text file on my remote server. You know I think it would probably be easier just to start over.
Select All Cut cmd+F8 Old version of .procmailrc from 2007-03-19 tab tab (the text I cut is automatically pasted in the note) enter
Boom. Now I have my old version safely tucked away here if I need it later, but I’ve got a nice clean slate to work with.
Oh, I was reading this great article the other day which had a quote that I want to use someday, possibly in a sermon. Select text, cmd+f8, tag “quote” “sermon”, enter. Done.
The old way would have been: “Ok, go to Finder, go to Documents, open Quotes.txt file, scroll to the bottom, paste.” Which took a lot longer, and left me with a huge file of all the quotes I had ever saved, which was almost as useful as those 8,000 bookmarks.
Got an idea for an article but working on something else? Save it, tag it “IDEAS”, get back to work.
Here are just some of the things I track (and by “track” I mean “tag”) Article ideas Books I might want to read directions jokes quotes tips receipts
Oh, receipts! I almost forgot receipts. Every month when my business Visa bill comes, I get a knock on the door looking for receipts. 98% of the stuff I buy is online, so I used to have to go through my email again looking for it. Not anymore. Now I use the regular Print menu and Print to Yojimbo. Hopefully I tag it “receipt” but even if I don’t, it’s much easier and quicker to search Yojimbo than all my email.
Whenever we’re planning a trip somewhere and we find stuff we’d like to do, I save it and tag it with the location and I make a tag for the trip. For example we went to Atlanta in March. The conference center website? Tagged as “atlanta” (location) and “alban” (folks who organized it) and “march2007”. Now next time we’re going to Atlanta, I just lookup all the stuff with an Atlanta tag and go “Oh yeah, remember we had wanted to go to this place but didn’t get a chance?” or “Oh that was cool, we should go back there.”
If you haven’t noticed by now (and some people have already stopped reading because of this) my mind tends to go all over the place. That’s actually part of the things I love about Yojimbo. When I find myself getting pulled to something new, I can leave a breadcrumb as to where I was. Or (Better!) I can get the idea down in Yojimbo and go to it later.
Boy do I love Yojimbo.