The following applications were reviewed in May’s Kachemacs seminar, Paperless Home Office.
Reviews by Diane Petersen, Kachemacs.

NoteBook 2 by Circus Ponies

Product Title: NoteBook 2
Price: $49.95
Distributor: Circus Ponies
Distributor Phone #: (800) 817-1471
Website: http://www.circusponies.com

Pros: Visually exciting interface, organizational structure is unique and dynamic.
Cons: No sketching or handwriting option (yet), limited portability.

When I was a kid, every fall I got a list of classroom materials to buy for school. Every year I found I had to buy several spiral notebooks for class. Little did I know that those spiral notebooks would be following me into adulthood, albeit digitally in the form of NoteBook 2, by Circus Ponies.
NoteBook is a digital version of that notebook I’ve always kept my deepest darkest secrets in. On screen, it takes the appearance of that spiral notebook, complete with the wire spine. What it doesn’t contain is all the haphazard clippings that stick out in all directions and the bent corners from exceeding its physical boundaries. Even the most disorganized person can keep this notebook in order and within a tiny package.
NoteBook has become the central hub of my GTD (getting things done) life. Combined with my MacBook Pro notebook, I have a resource to help me remember just what I was going to do any given day. The format caters to the right brained user. Anything of interest can be dragged into the easy to use format and cataloged into ways only I can understand.
Every notebook file has an contents page. Clicking on the contents links or the tabs on the side of the notebook leads to pages within the notebook. Also in every notebook is an index which lists keywords within the notebook. Information can be stored in the form of web links, photos, files on the computer, or even voice annotations. I particularly like To Do lists, which have the capability of being checked off to my satisfaction. It’s a great feeling to check off tasks completed!
The magic of NoteBook lies within the Services menu of the Mac. I like to think of NoteBook as a tool to navigate this little used feature of OS X. In most applications, the Services menu can be invoked and NoteBook is there to do one’s bidding. Want to create an action on an e-mail? Pull up Services within Mail and clip the relevant data. Working on a project in Pages? Use the Services menu to clip it to NoteBook.

NoteBook can be used best as a project manager. I am a busy facilitator for a Macintosh Users Group. My educational seminars are planned in NoteBook. All my thoughts and references are pinned to pages in my virtual notebook. I have another notebook to run my household tasks. Shopping, home improvement, errand running, and appointments are all clipped into my notebook. With seamless integration with Mac bundled applications like Mail, Safari, iCal and Address Book, my tasks are organized efficiently and effortlessly.
My life is not often spent in front of my Mac. Portability options are important to me. My notebook can be exported to HTML which can be stored on any other computer or my iDisk. I can see what i need to accomplish away from my Mac. What I would really love to see in future builds is even more portability to mobile devices. If I could have NoteBook on an iPhone, I would be running out to get one in a heartbeat. I am hoping this capability is foremost in the developer’s priorities as applications become available on the iPhone and other devices.
NoteBook version 2 is on the cusp of releasing version 3. I am informed that version 3 will incorporate sketching and handwriting recognition. Also included will be diagramming and flow chart tools. I anxiously await these enhancements.

Utility: 5 (everyone needs a GTD solution)
Stability: 5 (hasn’t crashed yet)
Documentation: 5 (tutorials are excellent)
Portability: 3 (HTML versions can’t be edited. No real web based version or mobile distribution)
Support: 4 (Developer is involved with end users)
UI: 5 (It’s even got a cute spiral on the spine!)
Potential: 4 (I can’t wait for the version 3 enhancements)

How incredibly satisfying! The best feature is that you can’t drop it and scatter all the pages on the floor. It allows for the right brained organization that many Mac users utilize. I score this at a high 4, but I’ll give it a 5 for overall effort!

Yep!

Product Title: Yep!
Price: $34.00
Distributor: Ironic Software, Inc.
Website: http://www.yepthat.com

Pros: Tag-based organization, cool interface with built-in magnifier.
Cons: Stability depends on tight Spotlight maintenance, auto-tagging still needs work.

I started keeping a digital filecabinet in about 2002. I was blazing the way in digital archives in the home office at the time. I was using an old HP fax/copier and an old Windows machine with clunky software. When iPhoto came out, I created a library just for my paperwork. Then I gave up and kept folders everywhere and sporadically burned stuff to backup.
Then I found Yep!, henceforth spelled without the bang. Yep is a PDF manager with an interface resembling iPhoto yet capable of so much more. Now it’s almost fun to organize, and mind you I am not an accountant.
Running Yep is simple. Through seamless integration with my scanner (special support is available for my Fujitsu ScanSnap) or pretty much any scanner, the print just lifts off the paper and into Yep, while I gleefully shred all the flotsam on my desk.
Once the information is lifted, I simply use the Yep tagging system to create search keywords so I can find the document when I need it. Yep takes advantage of the capability of the PDF format to attach metadata to the file. In simple terms, it’s like having one of those machines that prints on the tape that you peel off and stick to your stuff. And Yep does it as simple as that. Scan, and a couple clicks and I have a document in its own virtual file folder. It’s virtual because Yep doesn’t move stuff around or change it like an annoying virtual assistant, it just indexes it.
PDF files don’t just come from a scanner. They can be downloaded, or exported from your Mail. You can also use YepShot, which creates a PDF from a web browser window and puts it in Yep. This is great when I want to capture a confirmation number when online shopping. For some reason, I can’t YepShot secure sites like my online bank, but that’s probably the bank’s security settings.
Other fun features include the Loupe, or magnifying glass for those of us old people who have trouble with the fine print. It’s like QuickLook for Yep! The bottom margin of the screen has most of the same buttons as iPhoto, print, e-mail, rotate, edit, etc.

I have had some issues with stability, where Yep just says Nope! and crashes. An important caveat to be noted is that Yep relies on Spotlight for its superpowers. That is, Yep’s indexes are only as good as your Spotlight indexes, and neglected Spotlight maintenance is Kryptonite to Yep. With an inquiry to the developers and a most speedy reply, I was advised to rebuild my Spotlight indexes and have had rock solid stability and blazingly fast launches of the application since. To nitpick a cosmetic issue, in the auto-complete of the tags case isn’t preserved. It isn’t pretty when my tags say AcS or CEll Phone. They still sort properly, but it makes my tags look like d00d sp33k. The problem is fixed if I go in and rename the tag. Also, auto-tagging is not working right, but I don’t think I’d use the feature anyway, the control freak I am. I’d love to see a special backup feature built into Yep in future releases, where the PDFs, collections, and metadata would be archived on a schedule so one would never have to worry about losing a valuable file cabinet.
As the program stands with the features available, Yep is a very powerful tool for the home office. I could see it being indispensable in academia as well, where one can be drowned in dissertations. Yep is an integral part of my paperless home office, and the $34 is well worth it. As for the problems, the developers have been most responsive to their customers.

Utility: 5 (everyone needs Yep!)
Documentation: 4 (manual is great, but where are the release notes?)
Stability: 4 (as long as Spotlight maintenance is kept up)
Value: 4 (price is steep for shareware, but buy it with Leap for a deal)
User interface: 5 (that Loupe is sweet!)

Overall, I say yep to Yep! Overall, this application scores a 4, and that’s a keeper.

PageSender

Product Title: PageSender
Price: $39.95
Distributor: SmileOnMyMac
Website: http://www.smileonmymac.com

Pros: Allows for group and broadcast faxes, integrates well with Address Book.
Cons: Takes time to set up, limited utility over Mac OS built-in faxing.

There comes a time when one must say goodbye to old friends and move on. I took a sad look at my old 8 year old HP all-in-one that was demoted to a fax machine 4 years ago. It ran out of ink and I was loathe to invest in a new cartridge. This is when PageSender came to the rescue. Out with the old, in with the new…
PageSender is not anything like the old fax machine with its vertical streaks and the paper jams. PageSender allows for total digital control over faxed documents without the use of paper. The old fashioned POTS (“plain old telephone service”) standard is used with PageSender; a phone line and a fax modem are still needed. It goes without saying that fax technology involves a signal from one machine to another over a phone line. PageSender takes the technology of OS X faxing and carries it several steps further with elegance.
PageSender is more of a correspondence management system for the Mac. It has seamless integration with Mac bundled applications, notably Mail and Address Book. All it takes is a document, either scanned from paper or one living digitally on the hard drive of a Mac. PageSender uses live lookup for destinations, just start typing. Select a recipient or group of recipients (PageSender supports broadcast faxing) and send. Receiving a fax? Just set up PageSender to auto or manually answer and the document appears as a PDF for screening and printing (or deletion).
PageSender essentially gets set up as just another printer on the Mac. Anything can be printed and sent to the PageSender printer as a fax. The document can then be sent via fax number over the phone line or via e-mail to the recipient. IP faxing services (like MaxEmail) can even be used with PageSender. It’s simple, and it works.
PageSender is primarily intuitive, but some knowledge of how faxing technology works is required in order to set it up. Once the settings are configured properly, PageSender just works. And without the streaks my old HP used to print all the time.

Utility: 3 (the common user probably can get by with OS X fax)
Stability: 5 (hasn’t crashed yet)
Documentation: 4 (thorough, but a bit vague at times)
Support: 5 (smileonmymac has great customer service)
UI: 4 (boring interface, but functional)
Functionality: 4 (took me a few tries to get it right)

This application gets a 4 for its effort. For the home business user that needs to have ability to script and broadcast fax, it is indispensable. For the occasional home user who needs to fax once a month, OS X has a perfectly capable interface.

Cha-Ching

Product Title: Cha-Ching
Price: $40
Distributor: Midnight Apps
Website: http://www.midnightapps.com

Pros: Simply beautiful, iSight and reference file path integration.
Cons: Limited support for complex portfolios, little documentation, steep price tag for functionality.
I like to know where all my money is going, but I don’t want to deal with the tedium of financial software. Learning any of the popular packages can take as much effort as a full semester honors level college class. The ones that are actually available for Mac have that nice gray Windows look.
Bring on Cha-Ching! It’s simple to run and doesn’t take too much effort to get started. What it doesn’t offer in specialized features is totally made up in the snazzy user interface.
As an individual home user, I don’t have a lot of specialized needs. I simply want to find out why I never have as much money as I think I should have. My bank offers interface with the leading financial software, but they charge a monthly fee that I can’t justify paying. I simply want to keep track of expenditures by category and know how much I can spend each month.
Cha-Ching does have a number of features that appeal to the home user. After spending just a few minutes entering my accounts, Cha-Ching is ready for me to start entering transactions. Cha-Ching’s unique animated interface guides me through my transactions. The magic of Cha-Ching lies in its tag based spending and budgeting. This allows for any transaction or budget item to be tagged for specific categories.
Useful features with a definitely Mac feel include an “online” option where a browser window to financial institutions can be opened up to check on balances. With each transaction the opportunity is provided for a picture and a file path to be linked to the transaction entry. The picture can be from the Mac or snapped from the iSight. I can buy a really awesome item (like a new Mac!) and then take a picture of it with my iSight for Cha-Ching, then link the whole thing to a PDF residing on my computer with the invoice. This opens up great integration possibilities with PDF management software like Yep!, which is also tag based. Also, those pictures are great for home inventory purposes.

Cha-Ching may be great eye candy and intuitive, but some of us still need a little guidance. I found the documentation a bit lacking. The developers did mention that they are working on a guide for users of Cha-Ching. that would have helped me a lot when setting up the program. I also noticed Cha-Ching seems to be a bit like a roach motel for finances. Data can be checked in using QIF or OFX format (Quicken, Money, or bank) files. however, if Cha-Ching isn’t the brilliant software one has hoped for and export to something else is desired, it’s only CSV export into a spreadsheet. I’m thinking this could get messy.

UI: 5, actually 5+. This is what the Mac is all about.
Utility: 3. A lot more features could be added to compete with the big players.
Documentation: 2. Let’s get that manual rolling.
Stability: 4. Has hung a couple of times for several seconds, but never crashed.
Overall: 4.

If a home user is looking for something simple to use to track some household trends, Cha-Ching is a great option that is pleasing to the eye. For a small business owner or a home user with a lot of complicated investment accounts, software capable of tracking more types of accounts and bank or tax interface would be more desirable. However, don’t expect the beauty and simplicity of Cha-Ching.