Re: But, what is a PIM

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 3781

Posted by stephenz
2005-08-16 09:11:08

> I am interested in the thread on the State of the PIM market, because it makes me realise that my idea of a PIM seems to be different from everyone elses.

Graham,

I agree with you that most of the applications listed by Daly are not technically PIMs. However, even in the computer industry itself, the definition of PIM has become very broad-based and now includes almost any kind of information management software. Go to any of the shareware download sites (http://www.download.com for instance) and click on the Personal Information Management section and you’ll find most of these applications. PIMs seem to include a spectrum of applications from strict contact management software to to-do list managers to free-form databases and everything in between.

Like you, I consider an outliner an application dedicated to creating outlines, such as NoteMap or Inspiration to mention the only two that seem viable in the Windows world at the moment. But this list regularly discusses any application that includes hierarchical organization of data. We’ve expanded the category to make our discussions more interesting (I mean, how long can you discuss NoteMap and lament the passing of GrandView?).

So, I guess where I’m going with this is that for the sake of discussion, I think a PIM is any application that allows you to manage your personal information. How that might exclude sophisticated relational database programs like Access is this: those applications are generally used to manage corporate data not the information you acquire for your personal productivity (sometimes these overlap, as in customer management).

It is good that you raised this question, because I think it is important for us to remain aware of these distinctions, even if we choose to ignore them for the sake of lively debate.

Steve Z.

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