Best app for collecting information
Posted by pma
on 8/18/2005
pma
8/18/2005 8:44 am
<procrastination>
An optimal way to collect information for something you are going to write would be to enter your notes in an application, where you have
A. An information gatherer:
The citation
Your own comments (how does it relate to your work)
The source
One or more categories, which directly relate to an outline
Taking notes from web pages, you would often just copy and paste the actual citation, (it should fill out the source automatically, making a link to the web page). Taking notes from printed material, you should have a Scanner Pen, that would feed the citation directly into the app. Preferably, there should be integration with a bibliographic database as well.
B. An outline:
The latter should then communicate with your outline, so that when you added a topic in the outline, the topic would also be added to the list of categories mentioned above.
And in the outline, you would see the notes belonging to each topic.
Is this what ADM and/or Zoot does?
If so, then what would be the reason for selecting one over the other? I have followed the conversations on those programs here and on yahoo groups etc., but I'm still puzzeled. Do they basically do the same things? I got the impression here that Zoot is more difficult to learn, but stronger than ADM. Or the other way around: ADM is more user friendly than Zoot, and though being a competent program, it lacks some of the functionality of Zoot.
Or is Zoot just more "nerdish" than ADM - basically having the same functionaliy?
There is not much point in going for the less user friendly application, if you don't get something in return.
I guess that ADM and Zoot are the only apps to consider for this information gathering and sorting task, or are there other apps out there? CAN ADM or Zoot actually do what I've described above?
</procrastination>
An optimal way to collect information for something you are going to write would be to enter your notes in an application, where you have
A. An information gatherer:
The citation
Your own comments (how does it relate to your work)
The source
One or more categories, which directly relate to an outline
Taking notes from web pages, you would often just copy and paste the actual citation, (it should fill out the source automatically, making a link to the web page). Taking notes from printed material, you should have a Scanner Pen, that would feed the citation directly into the app. Preferably, there should be integration with a bibliographic database as well.
B. An outline:
The latter should then communicate with your outline, so that when you added a topic in the outline, the topic would also be added to the list of categories mentioned above.
And in the outline, you would see the notes belonging to each topic.
Is this what ADM and/or Zoot does?
If so, then what would be the reason for selecting one over the other? I have followed the conversations on those programs here and on yahoo groups etc., but I'm still puzzeled. Do they basically do the same things? I got the impression here that Zoot is more difficult to learn, but stronger than ADM. Or the other way around: ADM is more user friendly than Zoot, and though being a competent program, it lacks some of the functionality of Zoot.
Or is Zoot just more "nerdish" than ADM - basically having the same functionaliy?
There is not much point in going for the less user friendly application, if you don't get something in return.
I guess that ADM and Zoot are the only apps to consider for this information gathering and sorting task, or are there other apps out there? CAN ADM or Zoot actually do what I've described above?
</procrastination>
srdiamond15
8/18/2005 6:58 pm
ADM is essentially a multi-pane outline-based database. It works with your data in relation to the outline the same way as 2-pane information managers. So if you know TreePad, KeyNote, ActionOutline, Jot, UltraRecall, or MyInfo, you have the basic idea of ADM, as to how it relates data to the outline. (If you don't know these 2-pane outliners, what planet are you from? Kidding.) Where it differs is that the outliner is much more powerful than that in these other products and it has an advanced column scheme for metadata, like MyInfo but a lot more powerful. The presence of annoying (or worse) bugs and the absence of an undo command in the tree makes it unsuitable for important work, in my opinion. But it is an opinion that may be hotly contested in this forum.
I haven't used Zoot, so I'll leave the explanation to others, but the consensus is that Zoot is the most powerful utility on the planet for collecting, organizing, and retrieving data. Its difficulty seems to be generally over-rated. It's main limitation is that it is plain text only. (So what do you do if you have a quote that's formatted, say with bolding. How do you retain that information, since you will need to reproduce or at least acknowledge it in your document? Maybe someone else can answer that. I don't know.)
I haven't heard that ADM comes near to Zoot for pure data management. The only application I've heard of that rivals it is MDE InfoHandler. Again, I don't use it--my work isn't that extremely data intensive as that of others seems to be. But I think if I were in the market for an application to manage a huge amount of data, InfoHandler would be the first one I'd look at.
The only application I'm aware of that functions the way you suggest in connecting the outline to the data is ndxCards. I think it would be very nice for collecting information, if you don't have so much that you need the ones mentioned. The developer is careful and generally avoids bugs and instability, but the product is still young, perhaps still too immature for the most serious use professionally or academically. Perhaps not. What it now lacks but is in the works is a work space in which the cards that form its foundation can be organized. This feature will, I think, likely be the threshold after which it will be fully recommendable for serious work.
Stephen R. Diamond
I haven't used Zoot, so I'll leave the explanation to others, but the consensus is that Zoot is the most powerful utility on the planet for collecting, organizing, and retrieving data. Its difficulty seems to be generally over-rated. It's main limitation is that it is plain text only. (So what do you do if you have a quote that's formatted, say with bolding. How do you retain that information, since you will need to reproduce or at least acknowledge it in your document? Maybe someone else can answer that. I don't know.)
I haven't heard that ADM comes near to Zoot for pure data management. The only application I've heard of that rivals it is MDE InfoHandler. Again, I don't use it--my work isn't that extremely data intensive as that of others seems to be. But I think if I were in the market for an application to manage a huge amount of data, InfoHandler would be the first one I'd look at.
The only application I'm aware of that functions the way you suggest in connecting the outline to the data is ndxCards. I think it would be very nice for collecting information, if you don't have so much that you need the ones mentioned. The developer is careful and generally avoids bugs and instability, but the product is still young, perhaps still too immature for the most serious use professionally or academically. Perhaps not. What it now lacks but is in the works is a work space in which the cards that form its foundation can be organized. This feature will, I think, likely be the threshold after which it will be fully recommendable for serious work.
Stephen R. Diamond
graham.smith
8/19/2005 3:06 am
Peter,
Zoot isn't as difficult as it initially appears. The key to learning Zoot is the realisation that the folders in Zoot don't contain any data, they are simply filtered views of the underlying Zoot database(s).
The other aspect to grasp is that data doesn't have to live in Zoot for it to be searchable by Zoot, and automatically added to a Zoot database. You can also search Zoot and add data to Zoot using a couple of keystrokes from within any Program.
I have tried most of the alternatives to Zoot (most recently UltraRecall) but nothing seems to match Zoots "ease of use" at gathering data and finding that data again from a wide range of sources.
I would search this forum for comments on the programs you are interested in, as they have been discussed in detail.
Do scanner pens have built in OCR?
Graham
Zoot
Zoot isn't as difficult as it initially appears. The key to learning Zoot is the realisation that the folders in Zoot don't contain any data, they are simply filtered views of the underlying Zoot database(s).
The other aspect to grasp is that data doesn't have to live in Zoot for it to be searchable by Zoot, and automatically added to a Zoot database. You can also search Zoot and add data to Zoot using a couple of keystrokes from within any Program.
I have tried most of the alternatives to Zoot (most recently UltraRecall) but nothing seems to match Zoots "ease of use" at gathering data and finding that data again from a wide range of sources.
I would search this forum for comments on the programs you are interested in, as they have been discussed in detail.
Do scanner pens have built in OCR?
Graham
Zoot
vampire
8/19/2005 11:38 pm
You might want to look at InfoSelect or Evernote. I have a love hate relationship with all these tools. In Zoot I have never liked that it splits that data over many databases. UltraRecall is very stable and has lots of nice customization features but I don't really like the way it searches (doest not highlight found text within items). Infoselect has a wonderful search function and I love the editor. Its probably the most feature rich but it has a bunch of quirckiness in most of those features many of which were thrown in and not thought out well. EverNote is on the right track. Great dumping ground and really fast search function. In adition it has the same basic concept of virtual folders that Zoot has although nowhere near as powerful.
If I was stuck on deserted island with only one pim it I would probably take InfoSelect. The developer would probably appreciate that since presumably I could not complain about it from there. :-).
If I was stuck on deserted island with only one pim it I would probably take InfoSelect. The developer would probably appreciate that since presumably I could not complain about it from there. :-).