I really love this site, i have enjoyed hours of fascinating work-avoidance fun here. Even though it is the weekend, i am still having fun avoiding work here [marking student work can be awesomely depressing!]..
Many of you seem to hold InfoMason in high regard, and i was somewhat miffed to discover it went out of development. Do any of you know where a copy might be lurking on the web somewhere?
Cheers
Jeff

Well surprisingly, it can still be downloaded from http://download.cnet.com/IdeaMason/3000-2056_4-10398292.html

I have uploaded here, the IdeaMason tutorials. The link is valid for 1 week.

http://rcpt.yousendit.com/1072985223/02320ecfb8eee9ff47a3929687425bf3

They are SWF (flash) files made for viewing online, so you will need a player to view them on the desktop. Just google SWF player and you'll find various one; I use the free Swiff player.

P.S. You wrote InfoMason and I read IdeaMason automatically; I assume that is the redundant product you are referring to.

MenAgerie wrote:

I really love this site, i have enjoyed hours of fascinating work-avoidance fun here.
Even though it is the weekend, i am still having fun avoiding work here [marking
student work can be awesomely depressing!]..

...

Cheers
Jeff

--------------------------
As a one-time professor and later as various kinds of analyst, I know EXACTLY what you mean!

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

P.S. You wrote InfoMason and I read IdeaMason automatically; I assume that is the
redundant product you are referring to.

Thank you very much Alexander. Typing in the wrong name would certainly explain why I was unable to track down the programme!! Doh.
More work avoidance activity beckons... nice

MenA,

I hope you find IdeaMason useful. I was sorry to see it abandoned. It had certain advantageous functionality for writing that wasn't widespread at the time when it was under active development. It could handle long-form documents without crashing, it could hold research, and to some degree it enabled "chunking". (I didn't use its bibliographic features.) The developers seemed to be stretching for solutions to the challenges of long-form writing that several other applications familiar to this forum are re-addressing now. If it had stayed the course, it might have established a lead in that field.

H

Thanks Hugh
unfortunately, as the ideamason.com site no longer exists, I am unable to get a trial code.. ho hum. And the program looks really interesting from the tutorials Alexander pointed me to. I have now taken his reference to 'redundant product' to heart and gone looking elsewhere. I am having a go at Biblioscape now. I have tried NotaBene in the past but found it far too complex - all the markup/formating stuff just threw me out - I spent far too much time trying to put right incomprehensible formating curiosities, rather than actually creating. But I really liked th Ibidem feature where notes can be linked to references, and each called up from the other. It looked like a fine aid to avoiding inadvertent plagiarism.

Hugh wrote:

MenA,

I hope you find IdeaMason useful. I was sorry to see it abandoned. It had
certain advantageous functionality for writing that wasn't widespread at the time
when it was under active development. It could handle long-form documents without
crashing, it could hold research, and to some degree it enabled "chunking". (I didn't
use its bibliographic features.) The developers seemed to be stretching for
solutions to the challenges of long-form writing that several other applications
familiar to this forum are re-addressing now. If it had stayed the course, it might
have established a lead in that field.

H

MenAgerie wrote:

as the ideamason.com site no longer exists, I am unable
to get a trial code.. ho hum.

It gets worse, I think. It probably wouldn't do much good to have the trial code (or even a permanent code like the one I have) because you wouldn't be able to activate the software anyhow... Sorry, I had forgotten about this problematic procedure which apparently renders even my own purchased license useless --the machine in which I had installed IdeaMason in 2007 crashed a few months ago.

I've owned other programs that went redundant, like Courier, but in most cases the developers unlocked the software so that their users wouldn't eventually lose ownership of their purchase.

I am SO glad that I decided not to use IdeaMason for my academic work...

Fellow Outliners:

I purchased a license for Idea Mason when they were up an running. When they announced that they were going out of business, they provided me (and I'm assuming the other license holders) with a copy of an unlocked copy of the final version. It has no information in the licensee section of the "about" box. I don't remember whether they e-mailed me about it, or if it was on the blog with a link to the unlocked version.

Unfortunately, I assume it is still under license and copyright protection so I can't post a copy anywhere. I don't know who the people behind the product were so it is probably not possible to request them to release it, like the ECCO people did.

Charles

I definitely didn't get such an email. The only communication I ever received from the company was my receipt and license.

CRC wrote:

When they announced that they were going out of business, they provided me (and I'm
assuming the other license holders) with a copy of an unlocked copy of the final
version. It has no information in the licensee section of the "about" box. I don't
remember whether they e-mailed me about it, or if it was on the blog with a link to the
unlocked version.