Caboodle’s 1.3 Version, a Step Forward?

Whenever you come across to some information that in the future you might want to use or refer to, and you are too busy on other things to do, you just wished you had a safe place where to throw all that information in order to access it later. Of course, there are ways to do this, but do not offer an organized manner of storing. Well, this is what “Caboodle” enables you to do: to structure under a free-format all this information. It’s a simple and organized way to store random data, paragraphs, pictures, web links, tables, lists and so on. Every entry you make is defined by an icon (which can be altered if you desire so) and subject (that represents the name of the entry). Once you introduced the entry it is automatically saved the moment you turn to another one.

Caboodle has a simple interface that from its first launch is easy to grasp at. On the left of the window a navigation bar is displaying in order to let you create lists of custom categories. The moment you open the program several examples of entry are given to you to allow you to get familiar with the program and decide where you want to incorporate the information. Each entry is a category that has in its turn several subcategories. The entry starts as a TextEdit – type window with options to format, buttons on the tool bar that open useful menus to create tables and simple lists.

The program allows you to make different moves, such as : drag and drop, no matter what that might be, displaying photos and play video with a plan for future versions (speaking of which, resizing huge images or oversized clips into viewable dimensions, seems to be too much for its potency) . There are files it can not read; in this case it creates automatically links to a program that is able to read those files.

Caboodle starts indeed a new entry the moment you need to introduce another type of information, but this doesn’t work when it comes to dragging and dropping a photo, PDF, or other file into the category list. In this case you see yourself forced to create a new entry by yourself than drag the desired file, which by the way can lead to a great deal of work and lost time. If you need to export a text file to HTML format, this action results in bad formatting, with subsequent table cells and bullet-pointed list. The solution that works is to export the file under a Web Archive option.

The program has the tendency of slowing down if the volume of entries increases, and this thing can be seen even when you need to display simple text entries. It seems that through new version 1.3 created, Caboodle’s current version has to re-evaluate every entry whenever a new one is created. But even if this new version is designed as a useful concept, one still has the feeling that looks like an unfinished project. The price is not as high as it is for many of its competitors, and the programmer Davis Sinclair is striving to get the best out of his creation, in a constant concern for his customers, an attitude which is worth admiring. But yet, the question remains: Caboodle’s 1.3 version, a step forward?