Shovebox is great name, because that’s what the app is. It’s a box that you shove stuff in to. It competes in the same class of apps as Yojimbo and Eagle Filer. The Shovebox approach is to have a little box in the menu bar like you see below:

When you want to add something, drag and drop it to the box. Organize your notes and clippings later. Shovebox allows you to dump your brain when you get a thought or see something interesting. This allows you to focus on the activity at hand.

Basically, I use shovebox to store “stuff” and Actiontastic to store “things I need to do”. Shovebox is a great addition to my arsenal. I had been toying with Yojimbo, but couldn’t find a reason to justify the $40. $25 for Shovebox is easier to swallow.

Things I’d love to be able to store in Shovebox

• Passwords (integration with keychain)
• Serial Numbers
• Web archive from firefox (only works w/ Safari now)

I was reading a review by Robby on Rails about Highrise. One of the responders, Will had this to say about 37 Signals:

It doesn’t make sense to me. On the web (2.0) the mantra is integration, and yet here we have a single company releases compartmentalized applications that are an ideal extension of one another.

Will hit the nail on the head. I couldn’t have said it better.

I want to use Highrise as the contact manager for Basecamp. Why have contacts in Highrise and Basecamp? Why have Highrise tasks and Basecamp to-dos? What is the real difference between a “case” and a “milestone” or “project”. The lack of integration between the 37 Signals apps is shameful. Its as if they were all developed by separate companies! What is the benefit to me to use Basecamp and Highrise? I might as well be using Basecamp and Plaxo or Project (yuck!) and Outlook.

Don’t even get me started on what a pain it is that I can’t sync my contacts to my Mac address book (open APIs dont create applications, people do). 37 Signals should fix this stuff before I stop shooting my mouth off and start building a team to do it right! Anyone with me?

What it’s good for

It’s great for getting your folders looking great. Psychologically, there is a big impact when the labels on your folders are not big scribbles. This helps your brain to process a bunch of folders at once and makes it easier to keep everything alphabetized. One of the major advantages with this over a large sheet of labels in your printer is that you can do labels one at a time, which makes it a lot easier to just label one folder.

Included Software

All in all, it takes about 30 seconds to create a label from the time you need a new folder label to the time you have one! The software works on both windows and mac and you can print from your office applications aswell. The labelwriter is also a great tool for creating the labels for all the letters you need to mail! For that, you may want the Twin Turbo to be able to print more than one type of label at a time.

Why It’s worth it

It’s hard to quantify a purchase like a labelwriter for $100 (or less). It doesn’t save you money immediately but it is another tool in your arsenal to make you more efficient and organized. Over the long run, you will spend fewer hours rummaging through your files for the one scrap of paper you need!