Re: Tools for social scientists (was: NoteMap -- Greg, it's

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 4276

Posted by sub
2005-10-06 17:26:59

Wojciech,

> What I miss is a simple way to organise and annotate various types of information I have on my hard disk, say, my articles and notes in doc, rtf and txt formats, thousands of downloaded pdf files, hundreds of emails I receive every day, web pages I have saved and so on ... Maybe some database would be a solution?

If your needs are as specific as that, then I think your options are very much clear; you either (a) go for Zoot, which has the ability to monitor specific directories and automatically organise files in your virtual folder system based on the rules you’ve set, or (b) try IDEA! ( http://www.sycon.de ) which is a database that makes it a piece of cake to organise external files as well as annotating them. Both programs have got Outlook integration (assuming that is what you use for e-mail).

Practically all other information managers discussed here require you to enter/import information such as notes into them; they are much easier to work with when you start from scratch. I can understand why you were disappointed by UltraRecall since you already have your information in file form.

The advantage IMHO of the two alternatives I propose is that you can go on using your current folder filing system, while at the same time building your virtual structure within the information manager.

A third alternative might be Omea Pro, recently discussed here, which has excellent integration with Outlook but is not a database itself.

alx

Back to archived message list