Re: ndxCards

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 3526

Posted by sub
2005-07-22 14:14:34

> However, I do think that ndxCards is a great program and I am desperately trying to work out how best to fit it in with my other programs :-(

I’ve had this attitude in many instances and I believe it’s a definite sign of CRIMP.

Why else would we feel a sort of _obligation_ to use a tool simply because it’s _great_? Shouldn’t we just use a tool because it’s useful. Has any of us seen a Black & Decker drill in a shop and thought “wow, that’s great, now if only I could find something useful to do with it”...

After years of testing and registering software I am amazed by how _few_ tools I have ended up using regularly. Yes, even those I use all the time are not perfect and sometimes I may resort to using some of my abandoned software for a particular purpose but, ultimately, I find it is two things that contribute to usability over time:

1. The more I use a “mind tool” the more I get used to it until it ends up integrating seamlessly into the creative process.

2. The more I use it, the more info it holds, until it becomes my main reference source. For example, though Brainstorm is definitely not ideal as a database, it has an excellent merging function which means I can gather all my diverse project models into a single file as a background base. BTW, it is amazing how few “database” programs can actually merge files.

alx

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