Can you help me find OS X software to organize various files into "projects"?

December 31, 2009 11:49 AM

I am trying to find a program on 10.6 that will be a sort of companion to the Finder, something that will allow me to collect files from different directories and organize them into projects.

I feel like I have seen this before but I have no idea of the name, and searching various terms has only brought up lots of nothing.

Ideally, I'd be able to keep this application open in the background and drag various images into it from the browser. I'd also want to store web page URLs, spreadsheets, and illustrator files. I'd like to scroll through them and see their contents as if they were all open, much like QuickView does.

I'm envisioning a 'playlist' on the left of various projects, like in iTunes. I could click on my "Snow" playlist and on the right I could scroll through a couple of images of snow, a spreadsheet on snow fall in my area, and 3-4 URLs of websites with advice on dealing with cold weather.

Does this exist? Do you have any suggestions about applications that might help me develop a workflow like this?

Thanks a bunch!

posted by ejfox to computers & internet (6 answers total)

I can only think of using the tags feature built into OS X, and a quick Google search found a program, Tags, which seems to fit the bill.

Found here, btw
posted by mhz at 12:15 PM on December 31, 2009

Leap and Yojimbo are probably your best bets. Microsoft Entourage (which I don't use but have read about) has a thing called Project Center that might actually be worth looking at too.
posted by RogerB at 12:18 PM on December 31, 2009

I remember when I first started using iTunes -- I found it so easy to find the music I was looking for, that I remember thinking "Why couldn't this be the user interface to the whole computer?"

Short of that, I just use the finder. I organize my files the way you do ... by project. Active projects get put into the left-hand finder pane for quick acccess. Then everything that relates to that project (photos, docs, bookmarks, web pages, etc) goes into the folder.

The one exception is e-mail. Usually I have to create a parallel folder in whatever email program I'm using.

- aj
posted by Alaska Jack at 1:10 PM on December 31, 2009

Shovebox or Evernote
posted by dunderwood at 2:22 PM on December 31, 2009

There ar plenty of swell apps for similar stuff but you might be able to manage just using folders fills with aliases? It's simple, and integrates well with everything else because it's what the os expects you do to. You can easily drag websites to make links, too.
posted by tmcw at 3:01 PM on December 31, 2009

Check out DevonThink.
posted by Brian Puccio at 7:12 AM on January 1, 2010