Software Plug: VoodooPad

I have been using a piece of software (for Macintosh) over the last six months or so which I have really come to depend on. I have just realized how often I now use this that I wanted to recommend it to others. It is called VoodooPad. It is basically a kind of offline Wiki (although it supports communication with an online wiki) or you can think of it as a kind of “document database.” Basically, if you are a completely disorganized person, like me, and you have lots of little snippets of information (links, dates, lists, notes, etc.) then you can use VoodooPad to keep it all “linked” together in one little file that is easy to backup.

Basically you type in the VoodooPad ($20, or free Lite version) notebook and create a new document by putting two words together and making it a “link” which automatically creates a blank document in VoodooPad. You can then create more links within that document to new documents and so on. The new documents can open in a new window or in the same window (kinda like a document “browser”). You can also drag web links into the pad (which open a browser when you click on them) or files (which open the file when you click on its link). I first found this useful when preparing for my PhD applications. I made a “link” for “PHDNotes” and then a link for each school I was looking into, then each professor, department, or various categories of information about the application process. It was then easy to add tons of information within any of these while still having it all kind of “naturally” organized like a Wiki website might be. Of course, you can search through all your documents at once and export data in various formats. For a person like me, either I dump stuff like this in dozens of files and never remember what goes where, or I tend to dump everything into one file which is really a pain to sift through.