Yojimbo or Notational Velocity?

Bare Bones Software’s Yojimbo ($39 / $29 for students) is an excellent tool for filing and finding all the little snippets of information that must be remembered but would clog up my hard drive if stored as separate documents. Passwords, quotes, computer configuration details, product serial numbers, the text from really important emails, blog post ideas – these are the chunks of text that reside in my Yojimbo database. My Yojimbo database currently includes over 900 notes.

While Yojimbo has served me well over the years, I recently started experimenting with Notational Velocity, a clever little app written by Zachary Schneirov. In a nutshell, Notational Velocity does less than Yojimbo, but it does it at lightspeed. While Yojimbo can store text, images, and PDFs, Notational Velocity sticks to text. But in NV, the search and text entry interfaces are combined.

Creating in Notational Velocity

Searching in Notational Velocity

It’s not easily explained with images; it’s better to see it in action yourself.

Notational Velocity synchs flawlessly with Simplenote (free), a stripped-down but effective note-taking app for the iPhone OS. Because Simplenote can also be accessed via web browser, the combination of Notational Velocity and Simplenote provides an always-synched, always-available solution.

While Webjimbo ($30) extends Yojimbo’s reach to iPhone OS and the Web, I haven’t tried it. While I have a handful of images and PDFs in my Yojimbo database, probably 99% of my entries are just text. Synchronizing big files takes time, and the pointed simplicity of NV’s text-only approach means that I never have to wait for a sync.

I haven’t switched completely to Notational Velocity, but its speed and clarity make it a pleasure to use.