DEVONThink, KIT, SOHO Notes, Yojimbo

I have been using Yojimbo to store stray URLs, snippets of text, software registration numbers, and the like for some time. Recently I decided to test some more full-featured alternatives, to see if I should switch to another application for my information-gathering needs.

I worked with full-featured demo versions of DevonTHINK Pro 1.3.1, KIT (Keep It Together) 1.3.6, and SOHO Notes 6.0, comparing them against Yojimbo 1.4. All of these applications import text, bookmarks, PDFs, and web archives. The interface to all four is roughly similar, but there are big differences in the approach each application uses to gather, manage, retrieve, and export information.

Devon Technologies DevonTHINK Pro 1.31

Summary: This is a flexible, powerful tool with excellent search capabilities, built to serve power users.

DevonTHINK Pro is arguably the most powerful tool of the bunch. It supports a tremendous range of media types, from addresses to web archives, audio and movie files, and records and forms. If you find yourself working with more than RTF text and PDFs, you will find this broad media flexibility indispensible.

Its search functionality is excellent. Search results appear nearly instantaneously. The results are relevance-ranked, and search terms are highlighted inside results, which makes it easy to quickly sift through search results to find the correct item.

Labeling content is easy, but even more importantly, DevonTHINK supports on-the-fly content grouping. Select the content items you want to group, hit the “Group” button, and voila, a new Group folder appears.

The app provides several pane arrangements, so you can easily configure how the contents housed in DevonTHINK are shown on screen.

DevonTHINK also exports to more formats than the competition, but I found the actual utility of the exported files to be limited. Although it exports to OmniOutliner and .doc format, the exported files include hard carriage returns at the end of each line of text.

If you want to integrate your information-gathering app into one or more processes, you’ll appreciate the range of AppleScripts provided with the application.

DevonTHINK has other bells and whistles. For example, it contains a built-in web browser, and even includes a web server, so you can publish your DevonTHINK database to other users. More usefully for law students, it supports scanning of text directly into the database, so you can scan in text and save it as a searchable PDF.

[6/20/07 Correction: As Jason notes below, Devon Technologies provides a 25% discount to students: http://www.devon-technologies.com/shop/students_js.html]. The Pro version of DevonTHINK costs $79.95. The Personal version costs $39.95, but it does not support AppleScript and does not have the multi-user features of Pro, and there are some limits on the amount of information that can be stored in the database. Despite these differences, the Personal version doesn’t appear to be crippleware. If you want the ability to create multiple databases without size limits, and you want to use the extensive collection of AppleScripts provided, DevonTHINK Pro is the ticket. www.devonthink.com

Reinvented Software KIT (Keep It Together) 1.3.6

Summary: This app does the basics well and provides an easy to use interface. Unfortunately its limited search capabilities are a serious impediment.

KIT not only keeps it together, it keeps it simple. The app loads fast. The interface is very iApp-like, with a slide-out info drawer and enviable simplicity. It supports audio and video files, bookmarks, PDF, RTF, and text files. Changing categories, rating, adding comments, and tagging content is simplicity itself.

Unfortunately, KIT falls down because its engine doesn’t delve into the content of files. [8/14/07: See comments 21 & 22 below] Search results come up quickly, but search terms are not highlighted in the body of the searched text. Smart Groups are supported, but they only allow filtering by meta information (date created, file type, etc.) and do not allow filtering by actual content. These limitations are a serious drawback in an information-gathering tool, and mar an otherwise well-implemented application.

KIT costs $24.95, but students can buy it for $19.95. reinventedsoftware.com/kit/

Chronos SOHO Notes 6.0

Summary: Helper tools, support for all kinds of importing and exporting, and unexpected goodies make this a Swiss Army knife application that can do what you expect and more.

More robust than KIT, SOHO Notes works with a wide variety of file types, syncs with iPod,.Mac, and Palm devices. It even includes contact, journal, and alarm features; it could conceivably be used as a standalone GTD (Getting Things Done) system.

SOHO Notes does the basics well. Labeling content is easy, and the overall interface is relatively clean and uncluttered, if not as configurable as DevonTHINK Pro. I did find it bothersome that deleting a group takes a bit more work than in the other applications.

Like DevonTHINK, SOHO Notes highlights words inside search results, and its spiffy auto-generated search summary makes skimming search results easier. Over extended use, this summary feature may be more useful than DevonTHINK’s relevance rating.

SOHO Notes does Smart Folders right. Because the app burrows all the way down into content, these folders are more powerful than the Smart Groups in KIT.

It also includes a very useful tool called DockNote. This handy tab sits at the edge of your screen. When you want to drop new content into SOHO Notes, simply drag it to the DockNote tab, then into the appropriate folder. While Yojimbo has a similar feature, DockNote is superior in that you can also open folders from DockNote.

DockNote also keeps a record of your clipboard use, so you can paste in items you cut or copied into the clipboard days ago. This could be particularly useful in report-writing situations.

SOHO Notes costs $39.99. www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html

Bare Bones Software Yojimbo 1.4

Summary: This is a lean and clean application that doesn’t attempt to be all things to all people. If you already use other apps for managing image and audio files (or have no real need to manage them), and tend to rely on tagging and folders more than searching, Yojimbo may be for you.

Unlike the other three apps, Yojimbo does not support audio or video content, and only supports images as PDFs. It is not set up to sync with devices. It does not include alarms, blog posting capabilities, a web browser, or address book integration.

Generally this focus results in a very capable tool that does not get in the way. The Quick Input panel and Drop Dock work in conjunction to make creating new notes or dropping existing text snippets, PDFs, and bookmarks into Yojimbo fast and painless. The Drop Dock is not as capable as SOHO’s DockNote, but it gets the job done.

Yojimbo’s search capabilities lag behind DevonTHINK and SOHO Notes. Because the results give no indicator of relevancy, and no summary of the found text, you’re forced to select each file in the search result and scan it to find the text corresponding to your search.

Yojimbo costs $39, but students can buy it for $29. www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo

Different Strokes…

I wish I could mash the best features of these apps into one. I’m already comfortable with Yojimbo, and I favor small, lightweight apps over sprawling beasts that try to do everything. However, it sure would be nice to have just a few of the features from the other apps.

KIT shows meta information and facilitates tagging in a very elegant fashion.

DevonTHINK Pro’s file grouping flexibility is rather handy, and its window pane options allow for truly useful customization. Its search seems to be the speed winner, too.

SOHO Notes’ search results make sifting through search results easier, which means you find what you’re looking for faster. Its smart folders are flexible and powerful.

The rest I could do without. I don’t need a timer, a web browser, a web server, or the ability to publish from my information gathering application. I don’t need to sync to a Palm device or to my iPod, because my PowerBook is almost always with me anyway.

Since there is no such application on the market, for now I’m going to stick with Yojimbo. One of the things I realized in conducting this exercise is that with Yojimbo is most valuable to me for items that aren’t explicitly tied to a project I’m already working on. Bare Bones Software developed Yojimbo to deal with the problem of free-floating, “maybe I’ll use this later” types of information, and it handles these snippets well.

I already deal with projects that have graphics, audio files, and various types of text information in a reasonably organized fashion, and when I don’t do a good enough job of corralling these files, Spotlight is a great lasso.

Choice is a good thing, and all four of these applications have their strengths. My particular computing needs are by no means universal, and I would appreciate comments from readers who have used one or more of these applications. If you favor one of these apps over the others, it would be useful to hear the reasons behind your preference.