OK, I know I'm going to open up a whole can of worms, so let me just throw this out and see what happens.

I have given up my long search for the perfect knowledge management program, and I've been gradually hiving off parts of my work to different programs that do the job for me - tasks to the dreaded Outlook, document archiving and web page content storage to OneNote, certain web page functions to The Brain, my diary back into a trusted Filofax, my authoring in Whizfolders (or The Brain for web publication) and so on.

What I am left with are a set of structured data sets which have been in UltraRecall 3.5 and are now in Zoot 5 because I can text mine very easily with Zoot.

I am, however, getting disillusioned with Zoot - it is full of idiosyncracies, and Zoot 6 looks like making the whole spaghetti a whole lot worse.

I desperately want InfoQube to be the answer to every prayer I have ever had, but I am finding it frustrating to learn and completely counter-intuitive - everything I think is logical, like tabbing between items or clicking a URL to open it, doesn't work the way I expect it to. And though I understand that IQ is item-based and works on creating grids to view data, maybe I'm just a tree man at heart and need some structure that IQ can't provide.

I had a look back at UltraRecall today and it felt immediately right, and I understand (after some digging in the past) how it works. But I remember also all the niggling annoyances of it, poor documentation, unfriendly support (unlike Pierre's) and so on.

And I wonder which way I should be looking. So I thought I'd ask the experts: how would you ladies and gentlemen compare IQ, UR and Zoot 6 - what do you feel are the strengths and (remaining) weaknesses of each? I'd love to be reminded.

Thanks a lot!

Graham

"UR: poor documentation, unfriendly support"

If I had to review UR, it would definitelly include "great help file" and very fast, to the point support (apart from one misfortunate event we all know about). It's clear that developers are very "techie" and it shows in both help file and the support, but if sth is unclear, usually people on their forum help.

I openned the online help file just now, everything referenced, clear examples ... , very very goooood :)
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/custom_item_titles.htm

back to your question:

Zoot: never used, cause it's text only
IQ: downloaded and installed several times, crashed several times after installation (once it was non-unicode related, other I don't remember). When it worked, I had similar feelings to the ones you experienced, things were not intuitive to me, I don't know why. I thought I would move to it after UR "announcement"
UR: my PIM of choice, but waiting for calendar is taking toooo long. On the other hand, it now has very good search capabilities (not as good as dedicated indexed seach programs, but close). Certain operations take longer than some people would like (web import, import of large amount of data, etc), but otherwise, it's great!

Zoot 6 now has:

Internal Browser
Rich Text Notes
Internal POP & IMAP Email - like Thunderbird
RSS Feeds
Outlines
Integrated with Dropbox
++++

Completely build from the ground up.

I am now using - and am really happy with it as a comprehensive info manager.

http://www.zootsoftware.com/Downloads/z6.htm

Graham,

I think that any kind of comparison between the programs will be ultimately subjective because they are completely different beasts. In my view (knowing that my oversimplification makes no program justice):

- Zoot is mainly an integrated manager for organising information that is mostly already there in some kind of textual (including rich text) form. Its integration with browsing, e-mail, RSS and the like, makes it internet aware, something very important given the "extended desktop" reality in which most of us operate. Zoot's approach is to do more or less everything itself. It is a smart database, with outlining complementing its database functions, but it is not an outliner.

- UltraRecall is also a manager for organising information that is mostly already there, but is more file-oriented than Zoot. It depends on a tree outline to organise information, which can become overcrowded when dealing with thousands of items. UltraRecall does not try to do everything itself: it doesn't have (and probably never will have) e-mail, RSS and the like. As a 2-pane outliner it's arguably the best of its kind.

- InfoQube is a hybrid outliner-database-spreadsheet and its hybrid paradigm is probably the underlying cause of its unintuitiveness. Its numerical functions make it a very powerful business tool; at the same time, its conceptual 1-pane outline approach means that it is also a writing environment. Again, InfoQube does not try to do everything itself, in terms of e-mail and the like.

In terms of learning, I'd say that the learning curve for both InfoQube and Zoot is significant; for both programs people have complained in this forum that they "don't get it". UltraRecall benefits from its familiar 2-pane paradigm, though underneath it is similarly complex to the other two. I remember that when it first came out, its default view had several panes open and scared me away.

Hmmm, not the storm I had expected - we must all be becoming more placid in our dotage!

@Alexander - Unlike you I consider the three programs very similar. They're all built on underlying SQL-based data repositories, they all have the attributes panes, they all allow user definition of the data, all have built-in browsers and so on. But your comments are useful for me - I realise that, having hived off most of what these programs used to do for me to other programs, I need to evaluate them in terms of what I now do and not what I did do when first using them.

@Ian - yes, I've been beta testing Zoot 6 too, but without your positive feelings. It's added features have made its idiosyncrasies more apparent (for me), and, as it's been rebuilt from scratch it's full of bugs which affect data in a way that I'm not too happy with! I think it's moving in a direction that I don't need, so I could stick with Zoot 5, but the idionsyncrasies are there too, so ...

@Quant - I know you're a great UR fan. For the record, my comments about the help file and unfriendly support are based entirely on my own experiences. Some of my support requests went unanswered. Others were responded to in a language which might as well have been a dialect of Mongolian for all that it meant to me (and I'm no slouch - I've been working with databases for over 20 years). Requests for clarification mostly went unanswered. They just seem completely incapable of providing a simple step-by-step explanation of how to work around the bugs that the program certainly had when I used it. I have to compare their support to the way I support my customers, and I found it severely wanting. Perhaps things have improved ...

Graham,

Like you I use OneNote and Zoot to manage most of my information organization needs at the office, where I work on a PC. I have been eager to get my hands on Zoot 6.0, but have not really tested it in real life with my precious information. But what little experience I have with it does make me a little concerned. I will hold off judgment until the final release candidate becomes available. Nevertheless, I am a bit nervous.

I bought a license for Ultra Recall many years ago, but became disenchanted by the complexity. It took me a long time to get used to Zoot, and maybe I just wasn't willing to devote that much time to another application -- which is also why I have so far not been moved by InfoQube, which I recognize is packed with features, but remains overly convoluted for me.

If Zoot 6 proves not useful to me, I will be in a similar situation, with the options being to stick with Zoot 5 or to move to another application. I think my first choice after Zoot might be MyInfo. I like its clean interface. The developers are responsive and continue to improve it. The biggest issue, for me, will be how easily I can import my Zoot data into MyInfo, which has so far had a less-than-satisfactory import function.

Still Zoot does things that no other application I've seen can do. It allows me to view my data in tables. Allows for importing text with delimiters that instantly make that data table-worthy (i.e. if you create a delimited column based on the prefix "Title:" and you import content with text that includes the word "Title:" at the start of the line, all that follows will be included in that column in the the grid/table). Smart folders, rules and actions, mean the information I capture in Zoot is almost endlessly malleable. I never have to worry about categorizing the information as I capture it, unless I want to. In short, I am hoping that Zoot 6 will prove more useable than it currently feels to me.

Steve Z.

Graham Rhind wrote:

I desperately want InfoQube to be the answer to every prayer I have ever had, but I am
finding it frustrating to learn and completely counter-intuitive - everything I
think is logical, like tabbing between items or clicking a URL to open it, doesn't work
the way I expect it to. And though I understand that IQ is item-based and works on
creating grids to view data, maybe I'm just a tree man at heart and need some structure
that IQ can't provide.

Someone else will have to confirm this because its been a while since I used Windows, and therefore IQ, regularly. But as I recall, IQ is just like Ecco in that the columns you create do appear in the organizational tree. The grid can be eliminated entirely and you can use it as a strictly hierarchical tree-based organizer if you wish.

Tom S.

Stephen.

Still Zoot does things that no
other application I've seen can do. It allows me to view my data in tables. Allows for
importing text with delimiters that instantly make that data table-worthy (i.e. if
you create a delimited column based on the prefix "Title:" and you import content with
text that includes the word "Title:" at the start of the line, all that follows will be
included in that column in the the grid/table). Smart folders, rules and actions,
mean the information I capture in Zoot is almost endlessly malleable. I never have to
worry about categorizing the information as I capture it, unless I want to. In short, I
am hoping that Zoot 6 will prove more useable than it currently feels to me.

As you also use Tinderbox: Do you exchange data between Zoot and Tinderbox?

Would it be possible to enter data plus meta data in Zoot and move it to Tinderbox? And have Tinderbox use the meta data as attributes? Similar to what you do with the spreadsheet you import into Tinderbox (see Tinderbox Chronicles, part 3)?

I am asking because I plan to restart using Tinderbox for 2 projects. I will, however, often be using a Windows PC or tablet PC for entering data, which will be processed in Tinderbox.

Thanks, Franz

Graham

I've been using Zoot 6 now for several months, but most intensively for the past few weeks and haven't encountered and data issues. Not unexpectedly there are some quirky application & UI issues, but no data loss or anything serious like that.

Ian

also wanted to add that Zoot copies/saves/archives web pages - in almost all cases - 100% perfectly - totally way better than say Surfulator.

An interesting view on the merits of full-featured, 'complex' software like Zoot, UR, etc., versus stripped-down but simpler-to-use software like TkOutline, MemPad, etc.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_Better

@Graham,

So I thought I?d ask the experts: how would you ladies and gentlemen compare IQ, UR and Zoot 6 - what do you feel are the
strengths and (remaining) weaknesses of each? I?d love to be reminded.

What an excellent idea for a thread - although I must say that my encounters with Zoot 6 beta have disabused me of any delusions about my expertise.

On Zoot: I have been using Zoot for years but, like you and Steve, I have found my encounter with the beta to have been a bit of a roller-coaster. Maybe my expectations were too high, or - more likely - too focused on what was most important to the way I work. Although I started using Zoot 6 right at the beginning of the beta program, unlike a lot of the beta testers I was not particularly interested in emailing, gmailing, cloud computing, RSS-ing, Dropbox-ing and so on (although I'm not a Luddite: I see how important they are). I wasn't even particularly interested in having rtf at last. In fact, all I was really looking forward to was the release from some of Zoot 5's most irksome constraints connected with item-size, number of items per database (without having to archive too often), number of folders allowed, etc. These constraints are now, AFAIK, absent from Zoot 6. Hurrah for that!

But one new thing in particular that I was looking forward to was the new outlining feature. But I found - in common with a number of other users - that I could not make head nor tail of it. The feature certainly doesn't look like a single-pane outliner - but it's hard to tell because I can't for the life of me get anything into it. I think it must be a way of playing around with the folder-tree, but it has me totally beaten. This rather soured my first impressions, and the redesigned and "improved" Zooter was another hurdle for existing users.

In fact I withdrew from the early beta program with severe pangs of disappointment (aka sulks) over the outliner. However, needing to "move on" as they say, I now think I am going to take the plunge and move from Zoot 5 to Zoot 6 at some point - mainly, though, for the rather pedestrian reason that its new database format allows dtSearch to display research results properly. I should also mention that Tom Davis, the developer, is extraordinarily accessible to his customers and listens and responds crisply to their queries, suggestions and complaints - except that everybody is still too preoccupied with getting the communications aspects of Zoot 6 working properly to have much time to spare on what I'd call its "writerly" aspects.

Derek

Ian Goldsmid wrote:

also wanted to add that Zoot copies/saves/archives web pages - in almost all cases -
100% perfectly - totally way better than say Surfulator.

Even Zoot 5's "Archive Web Page" feature enabled me to stop using another Surfulater-type program - WebResearch (aka ContentSaver). Also, Zoot 5's dedicated import handler for pdf files (amongst other types) enabled it to import their text and create links from the Zoot item(s) to the original pdf file that I store elsewhere in the Windows filing system - another reason for dropping WebResearch.

On the Zoot outliner:
By the way, you seem to have cracked the Zoot beta outliner issue, so what exactly is it for? It doesn't seem to be a single-pane outliner in the conventional sense, although it seems to build a hierarchical list of folders and items (or, at least, folder-names and item-names) within the outline item's editor. Thus, I can open a new outline-type item in the outline folder, and I can give it a name in the item grid, and put a "folder" name into the item editor display, and add "items" - or at least item-names - to it as siblings or children. But what for? I don't seem to be able to enter any of these nodes - or whatever they are. In fact the whole thing seems to be a massively useless exercise...which leads me to think that two things must be getting in the way of my comprehension of its purpose:
1. I am persistently blinded to its charms by my insane desire to see it as a single-pane outliner (I can't shake this);
2. and/or there is some simple step, or maybe just a vital clue, that would turn this painfully frustrating exercise into a magical experience...of some sort.

Derek

@Steve,

I think my first choice after Zoot might be MyInfo. I like its clean interface. The developers are responsive and continue to improve >it. The biggest issue, for me, will be how easily I can import my Zoot data into MyInfo, which has so far had a less-than-
satisfactory import function.

After my initial encounter with Zoot 6 beta I started looking around for some alternatives, but nothing has so far tickled my fancy, although I am going to plunge into ConnectedText, which I recently upgraded. Also, as the Zoot beta now has rtf, a lot of my other CRIMPing excuses - e.g., looking for some program to draft with, etc. - have been rather knocked on the head. For example, Zoot's new rtf editor, together with its longstanding capability of opening multiple windows, gives it the ability to become almost as attractively confusing as WhizFolders - unless, that is, Tom is able to design some sort of Scrivener-like corkboard to hold them in.

MyInfo is another casualty of Zoot beta's rft editor; it IS an attractive program, but I can never come up with a really good reason to use it. I once thought that the more expensive version's ".HEAD" import feature might enable me to export Grandview outlines to it, but that never did work properly for me because of the peculiar way I use GV. There is a lot, however, to be said for its simplicity - or at least seeming simplicity. The problem is that I can't think of a place for it in my workflow.

OT: By the way, I wish web forum software could thread conversations properly in the way the old compuserve forums did. The "@" convention to mark answers to individuals goes some way towards this, but can result in long posts. OTOH, if one answers each post individually, the "thread" often gets swamped by successive posts from the same individual.

(Not a criticism of our forum, I hasten to add; it's just the nature of the available s/w.)

Derek

Graham Rhind wrote:

I desperately want InfoQube to be the answer to every prayer I have ever had, but I am
finding it frustrating to learn and completely counter-intuitive - everything I
think is logical, like tabbing between items or clicking a URL to open it, doesn't work
the way I expect it to. And though I understand that IQ is item-based and works on
creating grids to view data, maybe I'm just a tree man at heart and need some structure
that IQ can't provide.

I had a look back at UltraRecall today and it felt immediately
right, and I understand (after some digging in the past) how it works. But I remember
also all the niggling annoyances of it, poor documentation, unfriendly support
(unlike Pierre's) and so on.

And I wonder which way I should be looking. So I thought
I'd ask the experts: how would you ladies and gentlemen compare IQ, UR and Zoot 6 - what
do you feel are the strengths and (remaining) weaknesses of each? I'd love to be
reminded.

Graham, like you I have been searching for the all in one program as the thing I hate most during my day is moving data to & from various programs, i.e. I want it all in one place. Over the years I've tried them all. All of the programs that fit into this category are idiosyncratic IMHO. The more open the architecture, the more idiosyncratic.

I've followed Zoot since v1 & still it doesn't quite do it for me
ADM (now defunct) was getting very close but went south
UltraRecall is excellent but not for me. If you feel comfortable w it, that's definitely your tool.

InfoQube I use every single day for everything & I do mean everything from daily log, grabbing data from email, the web, researching / writing articles, using the graphic outlook like calendar for scheduling & reminders, GTD, creating Gantt charts for longer term projects, etc.

I am no techie -- not by a long shot -- so if i can figure InfoQube out with some help & a little patience, anyone can IMHO. The InfoQube issues you've listed seem pretty straight forward to me. Probably a few minutes of explanation would clear them up. I'd be happy to help as I'm sure others more expert than I would as well. One thing I'm sure of: InfoQube can structure any data you have probably in any form you can dream up.

Does IQ have quirks? Yup.
Can it be used as a single outline? Yup.
Can you add conditions to those items in the outline (Yup -- as many as you want)
Can you find stuff quickly (yup... by filter, source or search -- simple or advanced).
Can you link item to item, etc? Yup.
How is tech support? Excellent, friendly up to personal telephone calls w the developer.
Is development consistent? It has been moving along at a pretty fast clip. Don't let the version bother you, ie. beta 9.25 pre release 18 (the latest) is probably equal to ver 2-3-4 in other programs.
The GUI is not as polished as it could / will be but is being improved daily.
The stability is 99.999999999% as nothing is 100% IMHO.
Does it have a learning curve? Yup... until you learn the trick of how it works. Then everything else falls into place.
License is reasonable, free until v1 is released (unless you feel like contributing)
It is totally portable; no admin rights needed
Is it worth investing the time to learn it? Yup... if you are really looking for an excellent all-in-one
It answered my prayers.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA
http://janrifkinson.blogspot.com
http://www.bogartsdaddy.com
janrif@gmail.com

Franz Grieser wrote:

As you also use
Tinderbox: Do you exchange data between Zoot and Tinderbox?

Would it be possible to
enter data plus meta data in Zoot and move it to Tinderbox? And have Tinderbox use the
meta data as attributes? Similar to what you do with the spreadsheet you import into
Tinderbox (see Tinderbox Chronicles, part 3)?

I am asking because I plan to restart
using Tinderbox for 2 projects. I will, however, often be using a Windows PC or tablet
PC for entering data, which will be processed in Tinderbox.

Franz,

That's an excellent idea. I haven't tried it yet, but theoretically it should work. I will give it a try and let you know how it works.

Steve

Thanks Steve.

Re MyInfo: my main reason for using it is its excellent HTML exporting. I can build a project outline in MyInfo with all relevant files linked, and it will build a website with everything, including the linked files. I can then upload this via FTP to my website and give my clients acceess to all the information. If a file is updated, I can simply replace the uploaded version.


Derek Cornish wrote:

MyInfo is another casualty of Zoot
beta's rft editor; it IS an attractive program, but I can never come up with a really
good reason to use it.

Thanks for all the input up to now.

MyInfo - I downloaded the trial and had another look. It seems very intuitive and easy to use, but it strikes me as being more of an information manager than a (structured) data manager, which is what I'm currently looking for. For example, you can't create a data-entry layout as you can in UR - it's either in a table (as per Zoot), or via the attributes window, where the attributes are ordered alphabetically and don't seem to be re-orderable. Also, as mentioned, the export features are fine for information but definitely not for structured data, and this is clearly shown in the very primitive csv export functionality. For exporting to html so that my customers can view my information bases I use The Brain, though I can see MyInfo would be a good alternative.

Graham

You might want to give "org-mode" a look as well. I'd put it on par with InfoQube in terms of learning difficulty, though it has a well-written manual and it's conceptually based on trees. Structured data is supported via columns, properties, tags, tables, and something it calls "drawers". Different parts of your outline can have different columns, so you can define a different data entry style in different parts of your outline.

"org-mode" also has the benefit of very robust calendaring and time management, though it sounds like you've already moved that to Outlook.

I wouldn't try learning InfoQube without spending at least a couple weeks mastering Ecco first. Some things about InfoQube are still terrifying if you don't have a solid grasp on the underlying data model. For instance, panes you're not working on don't always refresh automatically, so you can be working on something, exit InfoQube, open it, and have your information look quite different. It takes a moment to realize you didn't refresh the display before exiting. I can see some beginners packing up at that point, fearing data loss, even though InfoQube is actually quite reliable. I also think the fields dialogs would be very intimidating to anyone who wasn't used to Ecco. InfoQube is worth the effort to learn though, if you can devote some time to it, as its underlying data model is more powerful than the other products.

-- Chris

Chris Thompson wrote:

Some things about InfoQube are still terrifying if you don't have a solid grasp on the
underlying data model. For instance, panes you're not working on don't always
refresh automatically, so you can be working on something, exit InfoQube, open it, ...

And they are terrified quite understandably! I would consider is a serious bug/error if the frontend (InfoQube) didn't match the backend (sql database).

quant wrote:

Chris Thompson wrote:
>Some things about InfoQube are still terrifying if you don't
have a solid grasp on the
>underlying data model. For instance, panes you're not
working on don't always
>refresh automatically, so you can be working on something,
exit InfoQube, open it, ...

And they are terrified quite understandably! I would
consider is a serious bug/error if the frontend (InfoQube) didn't match the backend
(sql database).

InfoQube currently behaves the same as many database. In particular, it behaves exactly as does Microsoft Access:

1- When a grid is opened, it captures a snapshot of the data in the database.
2- If a field-value is changed, this is updated in all other opened grids
3- If an item is deleted, it is deleted from all other opened grids
4- If an item is added, it is NOT added to other opened grids. A refresh is required to see the new item (if it meets the grid criteria, it will be displayed)
5- If an item is modified and no longer meets the grid filter, it is still displayed in the grid. A refresh will hide it. In Access, the same is true
6- The properties pane is always updated
7- Keep in mind that IQ is built to be a multi-user PIM / database. This has implications which single-user apps don't have

So I disagree that it has "serious bug/error". Access 2007 is iteration #9 (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 95, 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007) and is still behaving this way.

That said, improvements are planned, namely when:

1- Adding a new parent to an item: show it in other grids
2- Add new items to grids if they meet their criteria

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ designer

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

quant wrote:
>Chris Thompson wrote:
>>Some things about InfoQube are still
terrifying if you don't
>have a solid grasp on the
>>underlying data model. For
instance, panes you're not
>working on don't always
>>refresh automatically, so
you can be working on something,
>exit InfoQube, open it, ...
>
>And they are
terrified quite understandably! I would
>consider is a serious bug/error if the
frontend (InfoQube) didn't match the backend
>(sql database).

InfoQube
currently behaves the same as many database. In particular, it behaves exactly as
does Microsoft Access:

1- When a grid is opened, it captures a snapshot of the data in
the database.
2- If a field-value is changed, this is updated in all other opened
grids
3- If an item is deleted, it is deleted from all other opened grids
4- If an item
is added, it is NOT added to other opened grids. A refresh is required to see the new item
(if it meets the grid criteria, it will be displayed)
5- If an item is modified and no
longer meets the grid filter, it is still displayed in the grid. A refresh will hide it.
In Access, the same is true
6- The properties pane is always updated
7- Keep in mind
that IQ is built to be a multi-user PIM / database. This has implications which
single-user apps don't have

So I disagree that it has "serious bug/error". Access
2007 is iteration #9 (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 95, 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007) and is still
behaving this way.

That said, improvements are planned, namely when:

1- Adding a
new parent to an item: show it in other grids
2- Add new items to grids if they meet their
criteria

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ designer

why in 3 you are able to refresh the panes, but not in 4 and 5? That seems inconsitent to me to say the least. What stops you from checking whether the updated items should be displayed in the grid? It is just checking single item against single condition, isn't it? That Access does it that way doesn't mean it's they way it should be (at least I wouldn't expect it from the "user friendly app"). If I had an option, I would definitelly want the grids to always display what's in db, the latest data, not some half and hour old snapshot "because Access does it as well" ...

quant wrote:

why in 3 you are able to refresh the panes, but not in 4 and 5?

In 4 and 5, this is orders of magnitude more complicated. Let me explain:

# 3: Deleting an item: I simply scan all grids and delete the item if found.

# 4: Adding / modifying an item:
The following actions (by you or any other user, as IQ is multi-user, by design) can cause an item to appear in a grid:

1- Item added
2- Added / Modified / Deleted a field-value. This can be a direct user action or an row / column equation or an auto-assign rule
3- Added a parent
4- Added a child
5- The current day changed

So for any of those changes, one must check, for every opened grid, if:

1- If a parent is displayed in the grid, add it under the parent
2- If any of its children is displayed, add it as a context parent
3- If 1 and 2 are false, check if the item meets the grid criteria (Source, Filter, AlphaFilter, DateFilter)
4- If 3 is true, also add its context parent if there is one

All of this is feasible, and, as I said, it is planned (hopefully, this won't slow down the responsiveness too much). It is simply that I've got more pressing issues to complete first (like completing the full-featured calendar with Outlook and Google Calendar sync).

HTH