FYI, here's my current core set of information & knowledge management software; by "core" I mean the ones I regularly use and have more or less integrated in my productive process.

- Creative: Brainstorm, often exporting to FreeMind / NoteMap.

- Project Information, including Contacts, administrative documents and summary of outputs: Hyperclip, switching to UltraRecall

- Project planning: Excel (even for basic Gantt charts).

- General Information Base: IDEA!

- Documents, Presentations etc: Word, Excel, ConceptDraw & MindGenius Business.

- Project Archives and Resources, i.e. images etc: Windows Explorer is good enough for me for the moment. Also trying out Directory Opus.

- Time/Action Management: under review; testing RedBox organizer and other PIMs with year planner capabilities. May dump it all and switch to Outlook as a platform for DateLens and similar great plug-ins.

No holy grail in there I'm afraid; but I don't miss it anymore. I'm just trying to put the useful bits together in a system that works!

alx

Well at the this precise second, my list is

Creative: Mind Manager -> Brainstorm -> NoteMap.

- Project Information, OneNote (still working on this)

- Project planning: MindManager with JCVGantt (two way sync with Outlook).

- General Information Base: Zoot + Library Master

- Documents, Presentations etc: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Smart Draw

- Project Archives and Resources, i.e. images etc: AtLast Filenotes

- Time/Action Management: TimeTo and Outlook

UltraRecall looked good, but it fell at the first hurdle for me, as it doesn't have some of the "I use everyday features" that Zoot has, and to preview Word files you need to physically launch them. Some of the missing features will be added to the next release, but I was really looking for a Zoot replacement.

Concept draw I really liked, and I thought the Gantt drawing tools might be useful as that is the key difference bewteen Smart Draw, but they are seriously broken. The Concept draw people said that they will be fixed "...in some future release" So cannot really justify the cost of Concept Draw. Mind Genius, I like better than Mind Manager, but Mind Manger just fits in better with my workflow, so although I have both of them, it is Mind Manager I tend to use.

I've never tried RedBox, but I just cannot give up on TimeTo (A&B as was). In spite of some limitations, I have never come across any time management tool that comes close to TimeTo for helping me keep track of how busy I am and how busy I am likely to be in the future. I really don't like Outlook, but for compatability reasons, I am forced to use it.


Graham

My Current Set:

Creative - Brainstorm

Project Information - Zoot and OneNote (just at home for personal projects as I don't have ON at the office) / still testing the waters with UR

Project Planning - Brainstorm and Milestones Simplicity (for graphing a timeline) / looking at MindChart

General Information Database - Zoot / still figuring out which program works best for me to store RTF and graphically oriented information, probably will stay with UR

Time Management - Brainstorm

Steve Z.

My current set

ADM:
- for project and task management
- for brainstorming and drafting conecepts and texts (using the document view)
- Presentations (if I don't need to distribute the file)
- as my general information pot

NetSnippets:
to quickly research a particular topic and then put the research together into a html report (really great!). It is possible to link from ADM to to these reports and to distribute them to others easily.

Visual Theasaurus:
- to look up english words

TheBrain:
To visualize complex topics. Sometimes better than creatig a mind map. Very impressing for the audience if used during a presentation ('wow! what's this?')

Visio:
- process mapping

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MindManager X5:
for the usual business stuff when I need to share the files with others at work:
- writing concepts
- writing software manuals
- statistics
- Presentations
- Mind Maps

E-Mail:
Office: Lotus Notes
Private: Gmail

Chat/VoIP:
- Skype
- Google Talk

Browsers:
- IE6 (at work because of enterprise applications)
- Firefox 1.06 (at work and at home)

Wishlist
- NotaBene (too expensive at the moment)


Dominik

Hi co-crimpers,

Wow - it would be great to make a Zoot database based on these answers, where you could easily see the various categories, which programs each person had, and maybe even statistics for each kind of programs?

Tried to start, but I guess it will be too complex for me newbie, at the moment, after all...

Regards,
Peter.

Hi Alex.

Interesting list. Here is my setup:

Non-fiction writing (on a Windows XP machine):

* Writing: OpenOffice.org Writer 2 (I try to avoid Microsoft Word as much as I can but have a copy of the software in case one of my customers sends me a file Writer has problems with)

* Outlining: Notemap for long projects, e.g. books; for articles the outline feature of Writer is enough

* Brainstorming: Mind Manager

* Technical illustrations: Visio, Mind Manager, Corel Draw

* Notes and ideas database: Infoselect (I getting more and more dissatisfied with it but have a really huge collection of articles, notes, etc. as I have been using IS for years so switching is not an easy decision)
I am contemplating Zoot as an alternative but wait for the next release that supports RTF editing ñ most of the articles I have in IS use formatting. Ideal would be a information manager that is available on Windows and Mac OS (see below).
And I am waiting for Eastgate to finish the Windows version of Tinderbox (Mark Bernstein from Eastgate replied to my question when the Windows version would be available a few days ago: ÑWe hope to have good news for you shortly.ì)

* Project planning: OpenOffice.org Calc and Ganttproject

* Presentations: OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft Powerpoint

Fiction writing (on a Mac Powerbook ñ I wanted a machine that is completely Microsoft-free)

* Writing: Ulysses (NeoOffice J and Abiword for swapping files with my Windows word processors)

* Brainstorming: Mind Manager on the Windows PC

* Outlining: Storylines on the Mac or on my Windows machine (the Mac version has a few quirks the Windows version does not have), Notemap on the Windows machine

* Notes and ideas database: Devonthink Pro on the Mac and Infoselect (I often collect useful snippets while sitting on my workhorse Windows PC, having to export them to RTF files and importing them in Devonthink)

* Planning: Tinderbox (I like it but have not had the time to really get into it ñ I am waiting for the Windows version)

It¥s not really a satisfactory setup. But last year I was so sick of Microsoft Word and Excel that I decided to give a Mac iBook a try (I swapped it for a 15 inch Powerbook because the 12 inch display of the iBook is too small for my needs). And I tried out virtually all the nice writer¥s tools and word processors available for the Mac (except for Microsoft Word). But disliked most of the writers¥ word processors ñ the best choice in my eyes is Ulysses, a good alternative would be Mellel, which features a reasonable outliner.

Franz

Looking at the responses to my original post, I see that even though most of us are involved in different markets, we are all looking for very similar tools (OK, I know I'm not going to get the aspirant Sherlock Holmes medal for that).

For example, we look for project management tools of various calibres, for personal or business use, but they are still project management tools.

Our information management needs are quite similar, even though our personal approaches to organising differ, i.e. whether building our category tree from the start or as we go along, we still want a category tree.

Software vendors have obviously identified some of these needs, categorised them, and built some good applications to address them.

I have a feeling that it is in this categorisation where the problem lies; also, that's where the greatest market potential remains.

(By "problem" I mean the various needs outside recognised categories, that remain virtually unaddressed, as well as the major issue of integration).

For example, very few information managers deal both with structured and free-form data; I think only one handles RTF as well as lists.

With the notable exception of Agenda At Once, hierarchical task management and daily schedules are dealt with by separate applications.

In addition, even the current integration itself may present significant potential. For exapmle, PIMs integrate scheduling with contact management; Outlook adds communications. But personally, I prefer to integrate contact management to my project technical information and background, as my projects are collaboration-intensive but not on a scheduled basis.

An example of a more niche-market, i.e. more focused approach, are prospect management software like Act! and Goldmine, integrating contact management with communications, specifically targeted to sales representatives.

[To be continued]

alx