Top 10 Mac Productivity Enhancements: Page 5

Price: $50

Before PDAs and electronic organizers hit their stride, I carried around a paper notebook in which I stored every scrap of information I cared about. That included not just contacts, schedules, and to-dos, but notes to myself, URLs, ideas for new projects, receipts, drawings, and pretty much anything else that could be placed on paper.

It wasn’t searchable, but at least I knew that everything I needed was in there somewhere, and I never had to think twice about where to put something. Circus Ponies’ NoteBook is an electronic version of that old paper notebook: a place to store, organize, and (better yet) find all those miscellaneous snippets of information most of us accumulate all day long.

There are lots of snippet keepers out there, each with its loyal fans. What impresses me about NoteBook is its mixture of simplicity and power. I love the fact that NoteBook looks and acts like a paper notebook, complete with lined pages and a faux spiral binding! But behind that simple, intuitive interface is a full-featured outliner, a table editor, a sophisticated search engine, and encryption options to keep your data safe. And it can easily handle not only text but Web pages, PDFs, digital photos, audio recordings…you name it. Put everything in this one place and you’ll never again waste time looking for it.

Yojimbo Runners-up: DEVONThink Professional ($80) Yojimbo ($40).