Omea Pro 3 - to be released

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Apr 30, 2008 at 02:53 PM

This ongoing discussion re OmeaPro has shown two things: a) There’s a product out there that has the potential of being the holy grail of PIMs (almost what Chandler was to be before it died, and which has shown it can work, and (b) the company that makes it somehow lacks the vision to realize what they are sitting on, so it has been left on the wayside, although it has found a champion in the employee ranks who works on it.

Everyone of us who has dreamed of the kind of functionality that PIMfan attributes to OmeaPro should write the company, and tell them what they appear to have been unaware of—that they have a product with incredible potential.

I like UR for some things; for clipping I find Evernote now does the most accurate job a few percentage points ahead of UR and Surfulater.

Working with writing projects and my own ADHD I need a product that gives me a really handy dashboard or central place for everything.

I have even been trialing the latest version of the Brain again, but I find the constant movement of the arms too distracting after a while, and my monkey mind gets caught up on what arms I am *not* seeing (crazy, I know). But the Brain does bring all kinds of docs together in one place.

I have given IDEA the most serious trial yet—and there is a lot that I like, but I need the pro version—and frankly, I am not willing to pay out $165 for a product that hasn’t apparently been developed for two or three years. I left a msg on the forum asking about that question.

IDEA is a very simple and elegant product once you understand it. I set up about 10 records (projects or gateways to workspaces) in half an hour. A record is a gateway to a workspace because once a records is selected in the lower right quad, all docs, applications, whatever, associated with it appears in the upper rt quad.

IDEA is a product that ought not be allowed to die.

Because what IDEA and OmeaPro offer besides different features, is one important difference between UR, MI, and other similar products—that is that there is no need to pull in information. It works with what is there. Why did we get fascinated with programs that pull in info in the first place, except to have a way of organizing it and having it together when we needed it. Web clipping, we did it also to have an easy way of clipping from the web and filing what we clipped. Much of what I have in Evernote right now is not web-based, and could be a word processing file linked easily to any number of projects in OmeaPro or Idea.

I have begun wondering seriously whether I can make my own solution. Working with FreeMind and MindGenius (simply to be able to compare the value added of a very expensive program with a very adequate program that is free), I believe I can come up with something that is quite satisfactory, that will also allow a way to planning that none of the other programs discussed offer.

For outlining where I need it, if all of this moves ahead, I will probably use either MI or ndxCards on a stick.

I am doing a lot of quick and dirty writing based essentially on daily news items, op ed pieces, etc., and I find NoteZilla pro product with all of its memo boards, etc., as well as the best quick note making, drafting, writing combination I have seen so far for non academic stuff is ideal.

There’s one academic project I am using IdeaMason for, and at the end of the project will have a better perspective of IM. Yet, a lot of the preliminary work on that is best suited to IDEA, and perhaps to OmeaPro, which I will again look at.

I could probably stand to live with Outlook, but I am not sure I want to pay for it either.

However, for free, the program Thunderbird, which I have always used, though mostly I used Gmail now, will allow several hundred different plug-ins, some of which are really interesting and worthwhile. One of them allows me to click on an email url, and instead of being carried to a browser, see the url page within Tbird which opens a new tab. I have always found going back and forth between the email cl and browser a major pita.

Anyhow, back to OmeaPro and IDEA—would be great to hear from their developers what the plans are. Both programs have incredible potential.

Daly