Collectors/floating windows/icons

Posted by Hugh Pile
Apr 20, 2007 at 06:52 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I believe the first PIM program to offer this kind of functionality was ECCO Pro, with
>its Shooter. The Shooter is very similar to the Zooter in Zoot—clearly, the Tom Davis
>liked the idea. Both of these are small icons that float at the top of the active window
>and pop up a very handy menu of tools for collecting data from the screen.
> >Black Hole
>Organizer then introduced the icon that is similar to the ADM folder icon, and (I guess
>from your comments) the ITSD folder. BHO is still available, but does not seem to have
>developed much in recent years.
> >Another program with a similar approach is My Notes
>Center (http://www.mynotescenter.com), which has something called the Text Collector,
>which floats about on the screen waiting for you to drag and drop info into it.
> >BTW,
>ECCO Pro is a pretty good task management tool, even today, despite the fact that it’s
>been 10 years since development stopped. It may be worth a look… the only thing it
>lacks from you list of requirements is Outlook sync, and actually, it may have that but
>I’m not sure.
> >Steve Z.

I thought of Ecco Pro too, but I don’t think it will sync with Outlook (before Outlook’s time) but it will sync with a Palm.

Scrivener, whose praises I’m always ready to sing, has a floating scratchpad for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac note/databank programmes, such as DevonThink).
It’s a desirable for any self-respecting writing or information management tool.