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DevonThink alternative?
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 25, 2010 at 07:30 AM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>as far as I am aware (or can recall) nothing on
>the PC has the AI feature that DevonThink has.
I think that Atlas.ti http://www.atlasti.com/ as well as some of the software mentioned here https://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/Text+Analysis+Tools could provide such functionality, though not necessarily the other information management capabilities of DevonThink. The price tag may be off the scope discussed in this forum.
There are two low-cost programs often discussed here that for me have proved valuable tools when organising texts: Brainstorm and Zulupad. Both can automatically recognise identical text strings and link them together, though they work in a slightly different way:
- Brainstorm entries are paragraphs (from 1 to 65,000 characters); identical paragraphs are recognised upon entry
- In Zulupad you can create links from keywords, phrases or paragraphs; thereon, each time you enter the identical text it will automatically become a link
It’s not semantic or AI, but still very useful IMHO.
Posted by Hugh
Aug 25, 2010 at 08:25 AM
Thanks for those two links, Alexander.
Curiously the single piece of pure desktop text-analysis software that I’d previously heard of, Textanz, isn’t mentioned in the list on the second link. Textanz is aimed at writers, not corporate or governmental data-miners, and is on the PC platform. It was last updated in 2009; a note on its website placed in 2010 says that a cross-platform Java version is being developed, but as the note spells its own software “Textans”, I don’t have high hopes!
Incidentally, Personal Brain, mentioned further up this thread, is now beta-ing version 6.
Textanz: http://www.cro-code.com/textanz.jsp
H
Posted by Gary Carson
Aug 25, 2010 at 05:29 PM
The main problem I found with using Personal Brain as a PIM is that it can’t handle large quantities of text in the notes. If you create a few dozen thoughts with lots of text in the notes, the Brain slows to a crawl. I tried using the Pro version this way once and the thing choked after I’d added about 50 thoughts.
Personally, I can’t find a use for the Brain. It’s too big and complicated to use for simple brainstorming (something lightweight like Freemind is better for that) and it’s not robust enough to use for storing a lot of text information. So at this point I can’t find any use for it. I bought the Pro version several years ago, but I probably won’t upgrade to the new version 6.
I guess it’s main use would be to create huge interconnected webs of small snippets of information.
OneNote is the best PIM available for Windows, in my opinion. It has a great web capture capability. You don’t have to have the application open to make quick notes. You can use it to create traditional outlines (very ergonomic) and it can handle huge quantities of text and graphics with no loss of performance. Plus it has the advantage of being a Microsoft product (one of their best if you ask me), so it’s not likely to vanish into the Outliner graveyard in a year or two.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 25, 2010 at 08:57 PM
I’ve been trying to make PB my go to information manager for the past few months, so far with limited success (which is actually an endorsement). Here are my somewhat premature observations:
I agree with Gary that PersonalBrain is not a good place to write and store long texts. I have not run into the performance issue Gary describes, but I haven’t tried to load PB with lots of long text notes, because I find the note editor very weak. I would not use PB as a substitute for an outliner or writing processor.
Also, I do not think it is a great mind-mapper for brainstorming, although you could certainly use it as such.
Where PersonalBrain shines is in linking information, both internally and externally. If you want to store long notes in PersonalBrain, the best way to do this is to open a Word document as a template for a thought, write all you want, then save the document. It is now linked to that thought (a thought being any single item floating around in the “plex”). You can save the document internally or externally. If used properly, I think PersonalBrain can be very powerful, because it provides the structure for all the information in your workflow, but allows you to use other applications that handle various aspects more effectively. Keep an Excel spreadsheet for tracking an ad campaign alongside PDFs of the ads. Of course, you can do this in OneNote too—or the folders in Explorer even. The advantage of PersonalBrain is showing relationships among this information, as well as having simple, effective ways to search and find the information quickly. (What bothers me with OneNote [and I’m using 2007] is when you search for information, you often have to wade through many different pages to find what you’re looking for—and it has no “favorites” either, so you can’t have quick access to frequently needed pages.) But if you want to use OneNote and PersonalBrain together, that’s easy too, because you can copy the URL for a OneNote page as a link in a PB thought and have quick access to that page.
So, if you’re looking for one program to handle all your information management needs, you might be disappointed with PersonalBrain. But if you’re looking for an application to bring all your information together for rapid, sensible action, PB may work well for you. That’s, at least, how I’m now approaching it.
Steve Z.
Posted by Tom S.
Aug 26, 2010 at 01:35 PM
If this has already been mentioned, I apologize for missing it. But I want to highlight one characteristic of PB has that very few programs of its quality have. Its completely cross platform including a fully functional Linux desktop version. It also got a web interface that is in its infancy but which shows a great deal of potential. This is all the more amazing to me because of the complex graphical nature of the program.
Tom S.