While I’m on the topic of the site itself, I’d like to let folks know that I’m aware Tagamac is languishing a bit. I’ve got a reimplementation and redesign of the site in the works, but it’s taking a while to get it up and running thanks to external distractions. In the meantime, things are likely to continue to be slow here for a while; I’ll still publish notable software updates and any articles that I’m inspired to write, but I’ll be letting some of the minor updates slip by unmentioned.

Tags 2.0 requires 10.6 and is a free update for licensed users of Tags 1.0 (although you do have to manually choose to register it, as they have added a one-time activation over the internet). Although I’m unsure if Tags still has a place in my personal workflow, this is definitely an update worthy of attention if you’ve been looking for a tagging solution for your Snow Leopard machine that’s a bit simpler to use than Leap. For slightly more info about the update, see the 2.0 release announcement.

For more information, see the Yojimbo release notes, EagleFiler blog announcement, Together release notes, and MarsEdit blog announcement.

The second solution I turned to, and the one that I have been using and fine-tuning for the last eight months, was VoodooPad. Despite some unique drawbacks of its own, VoodooPad offers near-perfect synchronization, a daily log that far surpasses Together’s in usefulness, and the ability to append text to practically anything. The only downside is that VoodooPad is less flexible about what it can store (and how you can retrieve that info later) because everything is text-based whereas in Together you can toss whatever you want into your scratchpad, be it a PDF, image, bookmark, etc.

Components

To setup your own scratchpad using VoodooPad, you’ll need three things:

• VoodooPad 4.2+; the lite version just won’t cut the mustard, and as of 4.2 the Pro version is rather anachronistic
• LaunchBar, Quicksilver, FastScripts, or some other easy way to invoke Applescripts
• The Scratchpad Template (that’s a download link)

If you wish to synchronize your scratchpad between multiple computers, you’ll also need MobileMe or any other WebDAV-based server.

Installation instructions are included with the scratchpad template; the key thing to remember is that your scratchpad has to be open in VoodooPad and be the only document with the word “scratchpad” (case insensitive) somewhere in the document’s name or the Applescripts won’t work.

What it does

The scratchpad uses enriched plain text to accomplish its organizational goals. Similar to TaskPaper, all of the text you enter in the scratchpad is without formatting of any kind. However, thanks to VoodooPad’s automatic linking of terms associated with a document page the text is enriched with links that lead you to various useful, automatically generated pages. (It’s worth noting that VoodooPad does support rich text; the scratchpad defaults to plain text because plain text is more portable if you decide to change scratchpad solutions and is also easier to export for the web. You can definitely switch the scratchpad to rich text if you like, but it’s untested.)

The most basic idea for the scratchpad is the textual tag. A textual tag is nothing more than a VoodooPad link, but the page it links to is special: it automatically collects all of the lines in the document that contain the page’s title and displays them in a list. This is a handy way to gather data from across the document without needing to do any work on your part. For instance, I create a textual tag for every one of my clients, so that when I need to review all the daily log entries associated with them I just click the client name in a recent log entry and am instantly provided with every other log entry for that client. You could also use textual tags similar to the way TaskPaper does and organize tasks with them.

A handy way to automatically create textual tags is to use any word prefaced by an @ symbol when using the daily log or quick note Applescripts (for example, “@today”). These will automatically be converted to textual tags (if they don’t already exist) without any work on your part.

There are other special scratchpad pages, as well: any page (including auto-generated pages) can be designated an inbox, which allows you to append information to it using the quick note Applescript; you can create index pages for listing tag pages, logs, etc.; and composite pages gather the full contents of other pages and display them in a long list (useful if you want to view all of the daily logs for a given month, for instance).

These special pages are all created the same way: you just add a new page to the document like you normally would (typically by selecting some text and choosing Edit → Make Link), and then attach a special Voodoopad page tag to the page. A VoodooPad page tag, unlike a textual tag, is applied to an entire page using the VoodooPad palettes. You can feel free to use VoodooPad’s page tags however you wish as long as you only use reserved tags like “tag”, “inbox”, and “composite” to designate special scratchpad pages.

Once you’ve added one of the special page tags to a page, the auto-generation script will populate the page contents the next time you open it. There are also several meta keys you can use to customize what is displayed on a given page, the order of items, and so forth. Full documentation is available within the scratchpad itself.

How I use it

Unlike my Together scratchpad of yore with its handy shelf, I interact with my VoodooPad scratchpad almost exclusively through Applescripts invoked via LaunchBar. When I finish a task or have something else that I want to log as a timestamped note, I hit control-space to open LaunchBar, type “dl” (for Daily Log), hit space, type my log entry, and hit enter to save it. VoodooPad typically is running in the background, so the whole operation takes a few seconds at most.

If I find a link or something else I want to save, I copy it, invoke LaunchBar, type “QN” for Quick Note, hit space, and paste in the URL or type whatever note it is that I want to save. I then hit enter, choose from the list of inboxes that the Applescript provides me with, and when I’m on my personal computer I can then check those inboxes to see if there’s anything I need to process.

I rarely use the automatically generated textual tags (although I thought I would originally) because I much prefer the clean @-less textual tags that I create by hand (which additionally can include space characters and so forth).

Additional deliciousness

Though my main usage of my scratchpad has tended over time to focus a lot on daily logs and—to a lesser extent—noting URLs or things I want to think about/remember when not at work, you can easily use your scratchpad in more interesting ways. For instance, the web export system is setup to automatically generate a nice-looking version of the scratchpad, including well-formatted daily logs, with everything else formatted using Markdown if you want to share it with someone.

Setting up a TaskPaper-like task manager would not be particularly difficult, either, since you can specify tag pages to be inboxes as well as tags (useful if you want to track quick notes right alongside relevant daily log entries, for instance).

I’m sure folks will come up with their own unique usages, too; I’ve tried to keep things flexible and simple enough that it can appeal to numerous different workflows. The page auto-generation and web exporting is controlled by a pair of reasonably simple Python scripts and a page that controls the web export template, so those should be easy to modify or tweak if you so desire and are comfortable with Python.

Caveats and downsides

Overall, I’ve been extremely happy with my VoodooPad scratchpad. Certainly it isn’t as flexible as Together, but it’s also been far more stable. However, it is not without downsides:

• Because auto-generated pages are only refreshed when you open the page, things can quickly get out of date if you leave pages open. Currently the only way to update every page in the document is to do a web export.
• As your scratchpad grows larger, opening auto-generated pages will grow slower. Mine is eight months old with hundreds of pages and still moving pretty snappy, but the slowdown is inevitable thanks to the way that I have to parse through every page in order to autogenerate others.
• The Quick Note Applescript relies on your inbox index page being up-to-date; sadly there is no way to request all pages in a tag from VoodooPad via Applescript, so you’ll need to close and reopen your inbox index whenever you create a new inbox.
• The lack of easy-to-define smart pages or collections is also unfortunate, although I’ve found the meta-information based approach to work reasonably well for me.

Make it your own

I’m providing this template because I’ve found having a digital scratchpad that I can easily sync among multiple computers to be extremely handy. If you end up using it, I’d love to hear how you find it useful or limiting! I’ll definitely be updating the scripts and so forth as I continue to use and refine it myself, and I’ll share any significant improvements (updating will likely be a matter of copying and pasting a couple of pages into your personal scratchpad and maybe updating the Applescripts).

Good luck, and enjoy the scratchpad!

Resources for the scratchpad:

• VoodooPad
• The Scratchpad Template
• LaunchBar, Quicksilver, or FastScripts

Other improvements include numerous synching bug fixes, JSTalk support for the programmatic-minded, variables to access clipboard contents for new page templates, and more. For full details, see the release notes. The best part of version 4.2, though, is that thanks to it I can at long last release my custom VoodooPad scratchpad template.

Yojimbo 2.0 is a $20 upgrade for existing users, and costs $39 for new users. If you purchased Yojimbo on or after January 1, 2009, version 2.0 is a free upgrade. The program now requires OS 10.5.7 or higher (including 10.6). If you’ve been looking for an easy way to store notes, URLs, PDFs, application license information, passwords, and much more without the overhead and complexity of other solutions, Yojimbo has always been a great option, and with version 2.0’s improvements to the tag browsing system, I highly recommend giving Yojimbo’s free 30 day demo a try. For more information about the update, see the release notes.

Now Bartek is the newest employee at Cultured Code and we’re already seeing the benefits with Things 1.2. Aside from even better keyboard navigation support, Things 1.2’s greatest improvement is the inclusion of Quick Entry Autofill, previously known in iGTD as the “F-key trick”. By using Quick Entry Autofill instead of the standard autofill shortcut, you can have your task autopopulated with the selected text and—if possible—a link back to the source when you invoke it from just about anywhere on the Mac. Also included are LaunchBar and Quicksilver plugins to allow easy, text-based creation of tasks for those who prefer that method. Things 1.2 also adds Spotlight compatibility, so you can search your tasks from anywhere. Read more about 1.2’s featureset.

To say I’m excited by Bartek’s addition to the Cultured Code team is an understatement. I’ve always thought that Bartek was a talented developer who needed an equally talented interface designer to complement him, and now he has that in spades. Hopefully we will begin to see bits of iGTD’s power and flexibility make their way into Things but refined and simplified by the Cultured Code team’s skill with interface design. I was getting mildly worried if Things would be able to keep up with applications like The Hit List or would begin to integrate more powerful features (like hierarchy) similar to OmniFocus; with the Bartek on board, I am now much more hopeful for Things’ continued appeal not only to those who like a simple and attractive task manager but also those who need a bit more power and flexibility than Things has historically offered.

Other apps, like Together, have had Snow Leopard compatibility for some time; if a tagging app not listed here is central to your workflow, you should definitely check with its developer to see if it has been tested on Snow Leopard prior to upgrading.

The update includes numerous other minor features, improvements, and bug fixes. See the 1.4.7 blog announcement for details.

For full details, see the release notes.

Particularly if you were disappointed at Punakea’s switch from free beta software to paid shareware, this is a good opportunity to get it at a reduced price. Punakea is a handy “tag and quick search” app in the vein of Tags or TagIt / Fresh.

Unfortunately, there’s currently a bug that prevents you from using those two last features together, but regardless the program is much more useable now, and I highly recommend you take a look if you need to store code or text snippets. Full information about the release is available in the release notes.

For the full story, see the Hazel release notes.

For details, see the Pukka 1.8 blog announcement. Pukka is probably your best bet if you want a desktop Delicious client (my favorite bookmark manager is WebnoteHappy, but sadly its developer does not appear to be actively developing it any more), and is a very streamlined way to save and access bookmarks, particularly with the introduction of searching.

Snippet definitely is a 1.0, though. There are no menus to speak of and some of the user interactions are anything but intuitive, so before you use it you’ll want to check out the Help documentation on the Snippet website to brush up on the keyboard shortcuts. Additionally, there is also no way yet to paste your snippet directly into the frontmost app; you’ll have to copy it to your clipboard and then paste it into the app. However, despite these downsides Snippet is certainly an interesting and polished-looking offering that’s worth trying out if you’ve ever had problems synchronizing frequently-used code between multiple computers.

For more details, see the release notes. Unfortunately, it looks like a major version increase for Code Collector is unlikely to happen in the near future.

Sadly, Nifty Box has reached the end of the line. The developer has decided to pursue his true passion of working in the space industry, and Nifty Box will no longer be updated. The positive side of this is that the software is now available for free. For more information about the switch to freeware and how to transition your data out of Nifty Box, see the 1.3 blog announcement.

Tags is compatible with OpenMeta tagging apps like Leap, Default Folder X, or the newly released Punakea and is my favorite solution for tagging files after the fact (Default Folder X being the best option for tagging them as you first save them). Of course, you should be aware of the downsides to OpenMeta; as powerful as Tags and similar programs are, they aren’t something you should use without being aware of how they’re accomplishing their magic.

For more information about Punakea’s 1.0 release and subsequent move from free to shareware, see the blog posts on the first 1.0 release candidate, final pricing, and the 1.0 announcement. Release notes are also available.

Leap 2 is available for $59 with a 10 day demo, or $19 for owners of Leap 1 (to get the upgrade price, install Leap 2, launch it, and click the “Upgrade Now…” button for instructions). For more information, see the release notes.