Year end Outliner/PIM review/roll call

Posted by cpb
Jan 19, 2016 at 10:00 PM

Useful things in 2015:
* Plaintext for any input.
* Sublime (Windows) and Helium (Blackberry) for editing plaintext.
* Same as above for editing/evaluating Python.
* Python for turning plaintext into other things (html, pdf, etc.).
* Brilliant database and Gnuplot for one-off data mining jobs.
* Todolist.exe for project oversight and file bookmarking (sometimes use Brilliant if things need to be automated).

Promising things:
* Emacs + org + SQLite… good idea but laggy & temperamental.
* HLA… will replace python once I understand it better.
* Windows10 Outlook. Severely regressed for a while, but what I’m seeing emerge now is pretty slick… now arguably more capable than mail/calendar on older Nokias.
* Juggernaut. x86 Surface phone with proper convergence… if they don’t stuff it up, like blocking multitasking, or blocking win32 programs from running unless the device is docked, or not supporting console/coding keyboard-layouts and macros. Being able to run a win32 executable or script (via runtime) in the background is essential for working with custom tools. They need to sell it as a producer device, not consumer.

Disappointing things:
* OneNote on Windows10 phone. Seems to be missing a lot of formatting options.
* TheBrain 9. Still basic; still only memo & date field per record, no form/table customization, weak filtering, no i/o parsers.
* Blackberry Blend (and Blackberry in general), was so close to being a live-in solution, but they got flighty and went Android. All they needed for Blend was to add the integrated note-taking/task app, the web browser and the BB10 dark-theme.