A useful property of 2-pane PIMs

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 21, 2008 at 08:50 PM

Chris Thompson wrote:
>That’s just a grab bag of features I’ve found useful. I can’t think of an app that does
>all of them, though there are several that do at least two.

Chris,

I can’t argue about the usefulness of the automisation features you suggest in a web situation such as the ones you described. However I haven’t missed any such tool when dealing with information that I’ve created (or collected) myself. In the contrary I believe that any kind of program trying to suggest associations among my stuff would probably confuse me rather than help me. Unless DevonThink has some auto-learning capability.

As for wiki-like links, I’d say that their usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. I personally prefer a more structured approach, but it is obvious that wikis appeal to many people—and are very powerful indeed.

The one exception in my rather conservative approach is Brainstorm’s automatic identification of ‘namesakes’, i.e. identical entries. During my MBA studies, I put all new terms I learn in square brackets. Every once in a while Brainstorm will pop a <> sign indicating that I have already defined a term (often, to my chagrin, it will be in a different context, but still useful to know). But even then, the identification depends on my consistently inputing terms as such. I don’t think that I would appreciate it popping on every time I typed ‘marketing’ or ‘media’.

So, to summarise, I’d argue that what tools are useful, i.e. automatic associations etc vs. outline trees or whatever, will very much depend on the kind of information one is dealing with, i.e. the internet’s constant flow vs. personal initiative.

alx