Personally, I use Yojimbo for this and so much more. Yojimbo is basically my digital info dump. Everything from notes to quotes to PDF's to archives of web stuff goes into there. You should check it out.

I actually installed Yojimbo earlier today. I like the fact that it's so easy to add url:s to the web archives, just making sure the url are on the clipboard and pressing F8.

But I wonder how Yojimbo performs when you've got a couple of thousand entries in the database. Not "performs" in terms of speed and other computer related measurements, but in terms of how easy it is to find what you are looking for. I've also had a quick look at Journler, and there I can sort the web archives into different folders and subfolders. That means that I can groups stuff together that are connected, for a certain article I can file all my notes, all pdf:s and all web archives used as reference material together. I can't see no obvious way to do the same in Yojimbo.

On the other hand, adding web archives to Journler isn't as painless as with Yojimbo, especially since my browser of choice is Opera. Also, in Journler, web archives and pdf:s are not included in the internal searches by default. For every entry one makes, one have to activate internal indexing.

So, what I would like to know is, how many entries do you have in Yojimbo today, and how easy do you find what you are looking for. Also, do you have a clever way to group a couple of notes, web archives and pdf:s together? I know one can create new folders, but since I write a couple of articles per month, that list will soon grow quickly and become cluttered.

/Anders

Yet another reason to love DEVONthink.

You can capture the full archive, the pointer, or both, to your DEVONthink database and mine it later.

What do you mean with "pointer"?

Is it possible to have "hotkey capture" of web archives using DT Pro? From Opera?

/Anders

You can capture from anything that supports OS X Services directly into a DEVONthink database.

So, if Opera is cocoa, yes.

By pointers I mean the "blah blah blah.url" location bit. You can browse live sites in DEVONthink, capture them, whatever you want.

This lack of obvious (even optional) visual organization was a major area of discussion when Yojimbo came out. They (BBS) insist that it's not needed, that tags and searches will find for you what you are looking for. I think they're up a tree; besides, it would be easy to offer both.

I think you'd have more luck convincing the Journler folks to incorporate a decent web archive capability, long before you'll get Yojimbo with structure. JMHO.

BTW: Thanks for the reminder about Journler.

I personally like the idea in Yojimbo of "Collections" which basically work like playlists in iTunes. I think this idea of organizing items into endless sub folders is outdated. I find that the collections, labels flagging and search in Yojimbo is more than efficient in finding the things I need and organizing them for the period they need to be. BareBones will be adding the capability to have "smart collections" in a future version. Once that happens I will not need any further organization beyond that. Just my humble opinion.

That being said, just like in DevonThink you can either save a bookmark or a web archive in Yojimbo as well. And you can do so very fast without leaving the app you are in so you can stay focused on the task at hand. That was a big selling point for me since I use things in full screen mode a lot.

All the same, as you can see there are plenty of apps that do what you are looking to do. Choose the one that works best for your org-fu.

Patrick,

I do find the Yojimbo way attractive, not to have to bother about filing things. But, with _any_ structure, just a couple of thousand web archives in a mess, is it still possible to find what you need? I don't know, since I just started my archiving and have about 7 web archives in there right now :-)

I found EagleFiler yesterday, and it looks promising. Easy adding of new archives and it offers the possibility to make some filing if I want to. And both web archives and pdf:s are searchable right away. Journler also looked good, but there I have to "activate" searching for each pdf and web archive through a checkbox.

And of course, Devonthink looks good as well. But I like that EagleFiler really works on files that are stored as files in Finder. Makes a future switch easier, if I would want to.

Problem is, DT Pros AI looks interesting as well, but with 7 web archives I can't put it to any tests right now. :-) Think I'll try EagleFile for some weeks, and then feed DT Pro with what I've stored during that time and see what it spits back at me.

Choosing the right tools is hard.

/Anders

I really want to like EagleFiler. I love love love SpamSieve, and I was excited by the native file format storage of information in EagleFiler. In practice, though, it hasn't been all roses. On my PB, the appliction is slow - almost unusable slow - and I've only(!) loaded about 4,000 web archives and documents into it. I don't know if it's just that I haven't had time to play with it and understand it correctly, but the capture isn't quick enough either - I've tried to capture a web page archive and then switch back to another application, but the capture is trying to work on the (now) active application, which is unsupported.

Jury's still out for me on EagleFiler. I somehow think that with a few applescripts/automator actions for capture and tagging with Spotlight comments, some smart folders, and Spotlight's search, I'd be good to go just using the OS(X). Not that I have time to do that mind you... :)

Sorry, thoresson, I realized I did not answer part of your question. I only have about 200 items in my data base right now. Search is very fast on my little Powerbook 12inch and blistering on my 2.0 Dual G5.

And is searches inside of PDF's and web archives (and everything else for that matter). It uses the same CoreData stuff that Apple is using so your Yojimbo stuff even shows up in Spotlight searches as well. Very handy, especially when trying to find relevancy between items you have put in Yojimbo and ones you may not have.

For those that don't know, Yojimbo, EagleFiler, and DevonThink are $40 (DT Pro is $80) and Journler is donationware.

Mori ($40) might also be worth a look.

$40 seems to be the new standard.

Yes. Perhaps that would be enough. Are there any stand alone software that creates web archives from the url currently on the clipboard? My browser of choice is Opera, not Safari, so a stand alone software would make it easier for me.

/Anders

I use OmniWeb, which has a webarchive feature. I haven't used it. (Btw, it's currently on sale.)

Also, depending on your tech geek rating, you might try using wget. Which I also haven't used. Lifehacker has a tutorial.