Re: EverNote 1.0 / ADM / Ultra Recall

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 3513

Posted by daly_de_gagne
2005-07-17 10:25:20

Dominik, I also very much like the GUI of ADM. It is clean, contemporary, and doesn’t look like every other Windows program (which is also precisely the reason some people don’t like it—personal taste at work).

I believe that ADM has the potential to be a killer ap, the opinion of my friend Stephen Diamond notwithstanding. UR has shown, however, that there are other ways to do metadata (though not as elegant as ADM’s). UR shows strength with its template capability, indexing (what they call keywords, an unintended confusion in nomenclature).

I think UR’s web browser application ought to be segregated from its viewing of tree items, in the same way that ADM has a separate tree view, and a separate browser view, with a toggle button. Go into tree view and move through different items, you can still return to where you were in the browser. This is very important for people who may be moving from task to task, such as the example you mention, of needing to take quick telephone notes. It is good to be able to click the button for browser view, and continue where you left off.

My thought is that ADM needs to review its overall design—to ensure that it is, to borrow Stephen’s word, ergonomic, and that each feature is executed in the best way possible, without creating conflict with other parts of the program, or confnusion for the user. UR wins points, I think, by being introduced in a more market-ready condition than ADM 3 was, a function perhaps (though I am only guessing) of having more capital behind it. I hope ADM takes its time introducing ADM4, and that it is truly market-ready—otherwise all the neat new features will not be fully appreciated. That would be a shame because ADM4 will have a significant competitive edge.

My prediction is that the race belongs to ADM and UltraRecall in terms of conventional tree-based data base/storage/retrival systems. A program I think most highly of, and use considerably, MDE InfoHandler, has developed a unique and worthy niche of its own, in terms of mananaging data. What I appreciate about this program is the demand it makes of the user to be very consciouus of how data is categorized; using its tree view to display categories and infoitems leads to an outline that, at times, I find more helpful than the kind of outline I might ordinarily create for myself. I think IH needs to be more aware of the extent to which the web plays a part in the info gathering activities of its users. AskSam has also developed a unique approach, melding typical data fields and free form data.

The other aspect to all this increasingly is the ability to work with various files created by different programs by bringing all the files together into one workspace that can be set up and defined by the user. MIT’s Haystack has, I think, been one of the lead pioneers of this approach. But the commercial product that is taking the lead is OMEA Pro. I think that ADM and UR both lag behind in this regard.

Just a few thoughts on a Sunday morning when I really need to be getting ready for my call at the hospital.

Hope your w/e is going well.

Daly

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