Shovebox is a program from Wonder Warp Software that I recently acquired. I have to thank Macheist for introcusing me to shit wonderful piece of software because it has become one of my favorite tools. Shovebox - the name describes it well. Its a program that stores all those little bits of information you want to keep around but don’t have time to act on right now.
As a programmer I’m online a lot and it can become distracting. I start off looking for some cool Javascript to use on a site or a tutorial on how to program a PHP application more efficiently and before you know it I have 3 windows and 36 tabs open all at once. A lot of times many of those windows end up being sites like Facebook or Ping.fm and, of course my little guilty pleasure, the Hampster Dance. All this information would take hours to process and act on. You can open TextEdit and have a running page of notes and clippings open or you can use a program like Stuf to shove things in but those are better suited for different purposes. With TextEdit you’ll end up saving file after file, cluttering your Documents folder and with Stuf you’ll have so many clippings that it will become unmanageable. You can always save the URLs to your Bookmarks but then you end up with an insanely large Bookmarks menu/folder.
Shovebox takes care of this problem. I didn’t think I’d use it at first. I really don’t like having too many applications hanging around my menu bar. Before Shovebox came along all I had was Spotlight, the time, and Skitch up there. Shovebox makes a perfect addition. Whenever I come across a bit of information I’d like to use later whether its online or just an idea from my own head I can copy and paste it into my Shovebox with a descriptive title to come back to later. If there’s a web page I want to remember but don’t want to keep hanging around my bookmarks I can stick it in my Shovebox and come back to it. I sometimes want to keep a picture I found online hanging around but don’t want to clutter my folders with it or have to create a new folder because it doesn’t fit in with my organizational structure. When this happens I just drag it into Shovebox.
Its easy too. You can highlight text and drag it right into Shovebox and it will make a text entry for you without having to open any windows. Just drag and drop. If you want to fine tune the way the text is displayed you can either create a Quick Jot note which is plain text or create a new text note which will open a TextEdit-like window where you can format your text and give it a title. This is done by either clicking the Shovebox icon in the menu bar or using a keyboard shortcut defined by you.
When you’re ready to get back to what’s in your Shovebox you can open it and organize it however you like. Everything goes into the Inbox at first. From there you can define different folders which reside in a sidebar which can be renamed to suit whatever type of content they will contain. Once you’re ready to act on whatever you keep in your Shovebox you can open it directly in the program or export it to another program. Anything in Shovebox can be exported to a file type readable by almost any program on your Mac like .txt, .rtf, .jpg, etc.
Not all file types can be put into Shovebox. I wish I could put music and movies in it but it doesn’t allow for that. Shovebox will not replace your clipboard program. Programs like Stuf (highly recommended) can be used for clippings that are going to be used repeatedly on the project you are currently working on. Things you put in Shovebox however are meant to stay there for a longer period of time so that you may come back to act on them later.
Shovebox has become extremely useful for me. I am much more productive now that I’m not cluttering my Bookmarks, clipboard manager, folder structure, desktop, etc. If you find yourself not being able to act on all the information you want to or you end up cluttering your Mac’s desktop and folder structure with random files all over the place then Shovebox is for you. Its $24.95 - not cheap but definitely not expensive.
