Re: AskSam - is this my best choice

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 4994

Posted by 100341.2151
2006-01-12 20:30:01

Graham -

> In fact it seems an ideal task for AskSam.

I know exactly what you mean. I feel a similar need to have all my data in one place, i.e., within one software “container”. Zoot is not fully suitable for this, although great for organising reams of ideas, notes, etc., in plain text (it was probably better when it still had Agent-X). Nor does the combination of having well-organised directories and subdirectories of relevant files on one’s hard disk with using indexed searching via dtSearch quite do the job either.

Coincidentally, I’ve been re-evaluating my way of working over the vacation, but I’ve decided to stick with my Brainstorm, GrandView, Zoot, Net Snippets, Word 2003, dtSearch line-up for the time being. My only new decision is probably going to be to invest in Biblioscape, purely for handling references (not note-taking).

But I think there is a lot to be said for the “information bucket” approach of having EVERYTHING (htm, mht, doc, rtf, pdf, and so on) within one or a set of searchable databases, so long as the software is reliable and offers routes out for exporting individual files, sets of files, and folders.

I think your “browsing” point is an especially acute one. It’s a bit like the recognition-recall memory issue: jogging one’s memory by walking along the library shelves is often useful in stimulating lateral thinking.

My only reservation is whether askSam is, in practice, going to be able to do the job reliably. There is some discontent (to which I have been contributing as “DBC” in relation to Citation) on their forums about the quality of support. I was also disappointed with SurfSaver when it first came out, and this quite put me off using askSam as a receptacle for reports, etc., saved from the internet. This was using v5 of askSam, of course. I think the problems of SurfSaver have been sorted out, although it now only works with askSam v6. And asSam v6 also has its own internet downloading facilities, although I am not sure how good they are.

If you don’t need to download from the web. however, askSam may be a good solution, especially as it also has good searching features (if you have the Professional version, that is). Alternatively, couldn’t either Net Snippets, Contentsaver, or Surfulator be used? Their searching, browsing and managing features do seem to be getting better.

Derek

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