It's time to (re)start the Mac information manager series, a project I began a year and a half ago. I now (finally!) have the time to dedicate some time to this. What follows is a brief synopsis of what I've already written about, presented so that it's not necessary to refer back to older posts. I also set the stage for where I intend to go with the series from this point forward.

Here, then, is a recap:

You may be familiar with the archaic acronym PIM (Personal Information Manager). As I said in a previous post, I think this term is hopelessly broad and meaningless. Every program used on a home computer is, in a sense, a personal info manager. For the purpose of these reviews, then, I've decided to ditch PIM. I'm adopting a new acronym I'll call MIP (Making Info Perform). It's a bit cheesy, but I think MIP better captures a certain spirit of the myriad info management solutions out there today: the promise is to not only harness the chaos that is your data, but to feed it back to you with ease, and in ways that foster insight and creativity. That's what I expect out of my info management tools, at any rate.

Such tools are increasingly necessary to manage the flood of text, documents, PDFs, images, bookmarks, emails, multimedia files, snippets, and notes that comprise our digital life. The good news: there are many solid productivity and organization applications for the Mac to help reduce your clutter, most of which offer ample free trial periods. The bad news: they all claim to be the perfect solution for organizing your mess of information. Which app to choose?

That's what I'm trying to answer here by taking a thorough look at a selection of some of the more popular Mac-based info managers. Personally, it's a good time for me to tackle this. While I've used Yojimbo for several years, I'm not sure it's the app I want to stick with. Since Yojimbo recently released version 2 of the app (requiring a $20 upgrade fee), I want to better understand my alternatives before paying out.

If you're familiar with the backstory to this series, you know that I've struggled with identifying which apps to include. Now I've nailed down the list to include EagleFiler, Yojimbo, Together, SOHO Notes, and Circus Ponies Notebook. My selection criteria is based on several factors: personal interest, popularity in the Mac community, and reader feedback from the early days of this series. As I already covered Yojimbo when I began this series, I'm not going to review it again in full. Instead, I'll present a short update to reflect what's new and notable in version 2. I recognize that this is not a complete list, but it's a decent cross-section.

A key challenge I've faced in preparing to review these apps is one of classification. These tools do many different things, but they have common elements. One goal of this project is to find a way to tie them all together in some sort of framework. I think I now have a decent working model. When we last left off (a long time ago), I proposed that information managers for the Mac generally fall in three main categories:

Finders

These applications strive to serve up something better than Apple’s Finder to archive, organize, and search through your important documents. Apps in this category tend to focus on giving you powerful metadata tools to help you find what you need and organize your existing documents/files. Examples are Leap, PathFinder, EagleFiler, Together, DEVONThink.

Creators

These apps focus on providing a better notebook experience. They provide a central repository to create and collect notes, ideas, snippets, multimedia clips, and (to a lesser extent) existing documents. Simple interfaces, quick entry, and rapid search are emphasized. Examples are Yojimbo, Evernote, Notebook, VooDooPad

Visualizers

These applications focus on providing a better creative space in which to help you plan projects, discover relationships, and gain insight into your data. Examples are Curio, Tinderbox, OmniOutliner.

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How do we tie these categories together? I originally tried placing the categories on a linear spectrum, but several readers pointed out that a triangle plot would be more apropos. I have to agree (for the backstory on this, read the comments of the Spectrum of PIM post). So here's the triangle, in all its glory:



The idea behind the triangle is that there’s a lot of overlap in function between the various info management tools out there, so this plot is a way to show where an app falls in terms of utility as a file organizer (F=Find), note creator (C=Create), or visualizer (V=Visualize). The corners of the triangle represent 100% Finder (bottom left point), 100% Creator (top point), and 100% Visualizer (bottom right point). The farther you get away from any one of these points, the lower the percentage for a given category.

If you're not familiar with how to read this sort of plot, it's easiest to see how it works by way of example. And since this isn't an exact science, I'll employ a simpler version of the triangle for my reviews. Here's what the triangle plot looks like sans percentage lines for EagleFiler, as an example:



I place EagleFiler at a location that represents about 75% file organizer, 20% notebook, and 5% visualization tool. Make sense?

I’ve included Visualizers in this model based on the recognition that is an important sub-category of the genre, but I've decided to limit my reviews to tools that fall more in the finder and creator categories. Still, it's useful to include visualizers for two reasons. First, some of finder/creator focused-apps have functions that fall within the visualization realm. Second, some of the visualizing tools on the market include note-taking and file organizational features. My hope is that the triangle will, at a minimum, provide a handy way to think about any given info management tool (even if that app isn't covered in this particular series, and even if you don't agree with my where I place a particular app). In other words, this framework hopefully accommodates all or most of the apps that fall within the broader 'information manager' category.

OK. That's enough about the triangle.

In closing, I want to reemphasize a few points I previously made to set the stage for the resumption of these reviews: some of these tools focus on organization, some on creating new info, and some focus most on tying together all stuff into some sort of coherent package so we can find our way forward. There aren’t necessarily clear winners that do it all. Our challenge is to pick the right apps to do the job in a way that is natural for us. It may mean using more than one info management tool.

The question, then, is how do these various organizers measure up? I'll be looking at the aforementioned apps with a focus on answering the following questions:

1. Could I figure out how to use the application with minimal fuss (preferably without referring to documentation)?
2. Was I still enthusiastic about using the application after a week of use?
3. How well does the app integrate into the Mac OS?
4. How well could I manage all of my tasks (work, home, play, etc.)
5. How did the program ‘feel?’ How ‘mac-like’ is it?

Now on to the reviews.

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.9, neglecting beforehand to deactivate my plugins. This is a mistake. If you’re using WP.org and install updates manually as I do, ensure you turn your plugins off. Also ensure you take the time to back up your site and your MySQL database. It’s worth the extra effort in case anything else goes wrong.

At any rate, after I performed the update, I could see my site but was unable to access wp-admin. The solution: I removed all of my plugins using my FTP client. It loaded without a problem after that. Then I added the plugins back one at a time until I found the offending item. In my case, it was WP Security Scan. I’m sure the developer of this plugin will release an update imminently, but it is currently incompatible with the 2.9. Once I removed it, all was well.

Last week, the tech world was abuzz with the launch of Google's new public Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service.

Since I posted a while back about OpenDNS, I thought I'd share my thoughts on this subject. The main question I set out to answer is whether or not I should switch from OpenDNS to Google's Public DNS?

As I began this experiment, my most important criteria was speed. Which service offers the fastest browsing experience? To answer that, I searched around and discovered this helpful post on TechSutra — Google DNS vs OpenDNS: Google Rocks for International Users.

One of the readers over at TechSutra (Stevan Bajić) wrote the following bash script to test out the speed of four popular alternative DNS services. To use this script, run this in terminal (you can enter any domains you want here):

#!/bin/sh
isp=$(dig +noall +stats 2>&1 | awk '$2~/^SERVER:$/{split($3,dnsip,"#");print dnsip[1]}');
m="-------------------------------------------------------------------------------";
s="                                                                               ";
h="+${m:0:25}+${m:0:12}+${m:0:12}+${m:0:12}+${m:0:12}+${m:0:12}+";
header=("Domain${s:0:23}" "Your ISP${s:0:10}" "Google${s:0:10}" "4.2.2.2${s:0:10}" "OpenDNS${s:0:10}" "DNS Adv.${s:0:10}");
echo "${h}";
echo "| ${header[0]:0:23} | ${header[1]:0:10} | ${header[2]:0:10} | ${header[3]:0:10} | ${header[4]:0:10} | ${header[5]:0:10} |";
echo "${h}";
for i in "lifehacker.com" "facebook.com" "viewfromthedock.com"  "reddit.com" "tb4.fr" "bbc.co.uk";
do
  ii="${i}${s:23}";
  echo -ne "| ${ii:0:23} |";
  for j in "${isp}"  "8.8.8.8"  "4.2.2.2" "208.67.222.222" "156.154.70.1";
  do
    r="${s:10}$(dig +noall +stats +time=9 @${j} ${i} 2>&1 | awk '$2~/^Query$/{print $4" "$5}')";
    echo -ne " ${r:${#r}-10} |";
  done
  echo -ne "n${h}n";
done

I ran tests at different times of the day, and on different days. For me, OpenDNS and Google were consistently fast. Results for Level3, DNS Advantage, and my ISP varied widely (sometimes I'd get decent results, sometimes response times were abysmal).

While the results I received from Google and OpenDNS were best, the difference in speed between the two was negligible. We're talking milliseconds here, after all. I don't think I'm really going to notice the difference between a response time of, say, 11 ms and 13ms (although research indicates that milliseconds do makes a difference).

 

One think to keep in mind is that the initial test you perform may return slower results than subsequent tests for some obscure sites. The first time you search for www.threetastes.com, for example, (my wife's blog) the DNS service will likely have to go out and get this IP address from an authoritative server. After that first lookup, the IP will be cached with the DNS server, so the response time will be quicker for subsequent tests. In short, run multiple tests.

My results jibe with those coming in from readers at TechSutra: that OpenDNS may have a slight edge for many U.S. locations, while Google DNS may have the edge for users outside of the U.S. Best to test it out the alternatives for yourself.

So, I've established that Google DNS and OpenDNS offer comparably faster DNS lookups compared to my ISP. Both services also offer security features to make browsing safer (my ISP may have these features, but I have no way of knowing what's going as these details aren't published. I have greater confidence that Google and OpenDNS DNS servers are not and will not be compromised).

Now, which to choose?

1. Do I want to use yet another Google service?

I'm not too worried about this. Google privacy policy is very clear. I've experienced no cause for concern with my Google services.

2. Do I have a problem with the way OpenDNS operates?

When I began this comparison, the answer was 'not really.' After pondering this for a while, I have to say I do have a problem. With OpenDNS, if you type in a domain that does not exist, you are redirected to an OpenDNS ad-based search page. This is bad behavior. I knew this already, but I didn't worry about. I turned off NX Domain redirection in my OpenDNS user settings. Here's the part that annoys me: OpenDNS describes this feature as 'typo correction,' but say nothing about how this is tied to redirection to their own ad page if the domain can't be resolved. They should take a cue from Google and explain this more clearly. Sure, this service corrects typos (changes .cmo to .com, for example), but this is only a minor feature of a service that's really about generating revenue from the mistakes people make in entering URLs. In addition, when you perform a Google Search using OpenDNS, your request is redirected to an OpenDNS server before going to Google by default. This may also be turned off (by unchecking 'Enable OpenDNS Proxy') but it's not really clear how to do it. And let's face it, most users aren't going to mess with OpenDNS advanced settings. Lastly, you must have BOTH 'Enable OpenDNS Proxy' and 'Typo Correction' turned on to enjoy the benefits of OpenDNS' content filtering features (one of the big reasons people like OpenDNS).

Here's the bottom line: OpenDNS offers a fast DNS service that includes many extra free or pay features. It's a good option if you need those extra features and aren't worried about the way the service handles your requests. The main gripe I have with OpenDNS is that they are not transparent about how they're doing business. Google, on the other hand, offers a fast DNS service and reliable security features. It's a good option if you don't need extra bells and whistles.

Think I'll switch over to Google DNS.

This may be old news to most readers, but in case you’ve missed it, Blacksmith Games has organized a holiday giveaway of one iPhone game per day for the month of December. It’s called Appvent Calendar 09. Some of the games are quite good. Today, for example, you can pick up an excellent well-designed, and beautifully illustrated game called Blimp from Craneballs Studios (normally $2.99).

Also of note on the App store, Nuance Communications recently released a very impressive spoken word-to-text translation tool called Dragon Dictation. It’s free for a limited time. I’m very impressed with the accuracy of the app. It’s produced using the same engine behind the popular (and expensive) desktop clients Dragon Naturally Speaking and Mac Dictation. Once you capture your text, you can copy it to the clipboard, email it, or send it as a text message. Note that the app works by ferrying your voice recording to servers at Nuance, hence you need a WiFi or cellular connection. While translation speeds are zippy over WiFi, it’s a bit slow on my Edge connection. Of course, it’ll be faster on the 3G network. It’s definitely worth picking up while it’s free.

Last but not least, it’s worth your time and effort to monitor price drops and giveaways on the App store this month. There are a ton of one-day-only and limited-time holiday deals hitting the store each day. I use a free iPhone/Touch app called AppMiner to keep on top of the deals. Appshopper.com and 148apps.com are also good places to monitor price drops and promotions online.

snail-mail holiday card on your behalf to a (U.S.-based) recipient of your choice. There are six Gmail-themed cards to choose from.

A kind gesture? A small test of a future Google service? A subtle nudge to get would-be Gmail users online? The Gmail team says it's simply a 'token of appreciation to our most enthusiastic fans.' My guess is that the offer will be up a week or less before they're overwhelmed by requests.