Forum Posts Feed
Infoselect 9 Preliminary Version
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 > Last ›
Posted by gunars
May 9, 2006 at 03:50 PM
I would caution people about the subscription purchase. I consider it a rental model rather than a subscription model. At the end of the year, if you decide not to re-subscribe, the software stops functioning as intended. It will only allow you to look at existing notes in read-only mode, but will not allow you to add, change or even export data. When I first got the subscription to IS8, this wasn’t even mentioned on their web site. Only after my repeated complaints, they added: (Upon expiration data is accessed in read-only mode.). See http://www.miclog.com/company/purch_vs_subscr.htm.
I personally refuse to use software that will drop dead if I stop paying (or if the company drops dead). I may or may not get a regular upgrade to IS9, but I will most definately not get the subscription.
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
May 10, 2006 at 05:20 AM
Hi all
I bought and used InfoSelect 8 about 2 years ago then never used it much. When V9 was introduced here - thank you Kenneth - I thought about it for about a day then CRIMP got the better of me.
Without going into too much detail at this point - being totally afflicated by CRIMP - I have used and tried everything. The latest was InfoHandler which is a very well engineered piece of software - yet I found its interface too—well claustraphobic is about the best term I can think of.
I have since been using IS 9 intensely since early yesterday - I am even experimenting with its email function, albeit using MS Outlook in parallel before I go the whole way. I have to say I’m extremely impressed - it somehow is just easier to work with than everything i’ve tried. For me, about the only major thing missing is the ability to add properties, like pick list tags, categories whatever to topics/notes (and then use such as alternative filters), like with UltraRecall or InfoHandler. Oh, and perhaps some of the advanced internal hypertext/hyperlinking as per AskSam, or WhizFolders.
Overall I’m really excited - its a proverbial Information Management junkie’s sweet shop!
Ian
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
May 10, 2006 at 09:48 AM
Ian and others,
You are often using the word ‘crimp’ to describe the difficulty to find the best application for your personal information management. English is not my mother tongue and I don’t really understand ‘crimp’. I have found this explanation on the web: Weak; inconsistent; contradictory. Is this correct? Is it what you mean when you are crying CRIMP?
Sorry for this off-topic question but I thought that it is time to really understand this word and not just to guess what it means.
Thank you!
Regards,
Dominik
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
May 11, 2006 at 03:13 AM
To any sometimes or regular users of InfoSelect:
I just also posted the following to the InfoSelect Yahoo Group. I would really appreciate any insight from any of my fellow info managment addicts:
I am wondering if what I perceive as a limitation in IS (I am using IS
9) is just my own limited understanding at this point?
In IS, the principle means for categorizing a topic or note, or email,
or file or whatever is to nest it in a single parent topic. Aside from
linking, which extends this a bit - in IS we seem required to choose
one and only one parent topic (category or category group) for any
item. In reality though, the information contained in any particular
item can easily mean it should belong to many parent topics (categories).
The search function, and the new (search) Folders in IS are very
poweful and fast - which mitigates this somewhat, but is not a
substitute. Why not? Because the content or subject of a
data/text/web/file/email item only sometimes contain content that
enables you to limit a search result set to an effectively precise
result. Which is why its so powerful to add (if possible) multiple
categories to ones data items - and such categories are typically made
up of terms that are NOT contained within the content or subject of a
data item.
InfoHandler is the most sophisticated exponent of this. You
progressively create multiple category groups - each with as many
categories/sub-categories as you like. Then you assign any combination
of those to any data item. Then when you want to find any item or
group of items, you can either use a traditional search function, or
select any combinbation of categories as a means to create a category
intersection and thus a very precise filtered list of items.
In InfoSelect - there is something like this, but it seems only
available in Forms. You can create something like the analogue of
category groups with a Field using the List format. So that in any
Form you can have multiple Fields, each potentially with a List Format
- and thereby assign multiple ‘categories’ to any such Form.
So ideally then, what I want to do is assign any selector item to
multiple topics. It wouldn’t be a good thing just to clone items
(clones are like virtual items or shortcuts - not copies) - because
clones just totally clutter the tree or selector. What would be really
nice would be to have columns - not the kind of grid columns that
currently exist, but where each column is like a Field in a Form, and
could have different properties - the most important one being a list
from which you could assign one value from each different column to
any item. And then any item, or group of items could be filtered by
selecting an intersection of values from multiple columns.
OK, so any InfoSelect users familiar with ADM, MyInfo, UltraRecall,
InfoHandler will be VERY familiar with all of this.
Anyway, my final point and question is, to anyone nutty enough to have
read all of this - :-) - is have you found any cool creative
techniques where you can do this kind of category intersection
filtering thing in InfoSelect?
Thank you very much!
Ian Goldsmid
Posted by Franz Grieser
May 11, 2006 at 07:03 AM
Hi Ian
>The search
>function, and the new (search) Folders in IS are very
>poweful and fast - which
>mitigates this somewhat, but is not a
>substitute. Why not? Because the content or
>subject of a
>data/text/web/file/email item only sometimes contain content
>that
>enables you to limit a search result set to an effectively precise
>result.
>Which is why its so powerful to add (if possible) multiple
>categories to ones data
>items - and such categories are typically made
>up of terms that are NOT contained
>within the content or subject of a
>data item.
But nobody says that you cannot enter category names inside a note.
To be able to use the fast Search feature to filter out notes belonging to a particular category, I type the category name(s) at the end of each note. The new autocomplete feature helps you in doing so (up to vs9 I had a note in the tree containing all the category names so I could copy and paste them).
Franz