JB, I noticed you said you're quoting people from here.

Regardless of the legalities or technicalities, as a courtesy, I hope you are asking for the permission of anyone you do quote from here. The point is not whether the quote is complimentary or not, but the courtesy.

When you are connected with a commercial enterprise - inasmuch as you appear to be working for BrainstormWFO, and have incorporated its name into your handle - it is especially important both from a pr and a credibility perspective that anyone quoted on the BrainstormWFO site is aware of the fact, and has given permission.

Daly



JBfromBrainStormWFO wrote:

Man Chaos Intellect that brings back memories, I'd totally forgotten my attempt to
live in it years ago.

Is there any place where I can read about your workflow, Steve?
I'm curious how you use Zoot and Intellect and others together.

I already got
Alexander's figured out... no idea you had posted so much about BrainStormWFO, Alex,
you've been doing it for years. Respect.

I admit Cyborganize might currently be
weak on file management, Ultra Recall or something else might ultimately be a
solution I'd look at.

I'm finishing up a page that's purely reconstructed from
BrainStormWFO user reviews and testimonials, many of them from here. I literally
just copied them all into BrainStormWFO, sorted them, and created a page from it.


It's still rough but here's the link, since I'm quoting several people from here.
The quote attributions aren't added yet.
http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/265-2/

Are you aware that some of those quotes are ten years old? (One from Alexander I traced back to a C/Net comment dated 2004.) It's common practice to include the date of a testimonial with the text so readers can determine whether the user's opinion is still relevant.

Is this the best way to promote your software? Your approach, so far, has put me entirely off the product. You're trying way too hard.


JBfromBrainStormWFO wrote:

Man Chaos Intellect that brings back memories, I'd totally forgotten my attempt to
live in it years ago.

Is there any place where I can read about your workflow, Steve?
I'm curious how you use Zoot and Intellect and others together.

I already got
Alexander's figured out... no idea you had posted so much about BrainStormWFO, Alex,
you've been doing it for years. Respect.

I admit Cyborganize might currently be
weak on file management, Ultra Recall or something else might ultimately be a
solution I'd look at.

I'm finishing up a page that's purely reconstructed from
BrainStormWFO user reviews and testimonials, many of them from here. I literally
just copied them all into BrainStormWFO, sorted them, and created a page from it.


It's still rough but here's the link, since I'm quoting several people from here.
The quote attributions aren't added yet.
http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/265-2/

Speaking about JBfromBrainStormWFO, bobmclain wrote:

Are you aware that some of those quotes are ten years old? (One from Alexander I traced
back to a C/Net comment dated 2004.) It's common practice to include the date of a
testimonial with the text so readers can determine whether the user's opinion is
still relevant.

Is this the best way to promote your software? Your approach, so
far, has put me entirely off the product. You're trying way too
hard.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree. Indeed, JBfromBrainStormWFO's postings have been so numerous and ... that I no longer will read them.

I don't use Zoot. I'm a dream vacation consultant which is a fancier (and more accurate) term for travel agent. That's why I said my business is contact oriented.

When it comes to PIM's, the "personal" part is the focus. There are a gazillion (exaggeration, but not by much) ones out there. I've used many; Lotus Organizer, Agendus, proprietary for my industry, Above and Beyond, etc. All have their pluses, no doubt. But Intellect http://www.chaossoftware.com/ works best for me. I do miss features from the others at times....

My main programs that are running RIGHT NOW that I use to get the job done: Intellect, Brainstorm, Notetab http://www.notetab.com/downloads.php , AskSam http://www.asksam.com Atlantis Word Processor http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/

Work flow later - I need to help folks find where to go.....

Steve

JBfromBrainStormWFO wrote:

Man Chaos Intellect that brings back memories, I'd totally forgotten my attempt to
live in it years ago.

Is there any place where I can read about your workflow, Steve?
I'm curious how you use Zoot and Intellect and others together.

Like Quant, I find UR absolutely indispensable for all sorts of information collection and organization, and while I have tried virtually ever other information manager available (that uncontrollable urge in this forum...), at the end of the day UR is simply the best, hands down, IMHO. (My principal use for UR is my academic work - I am a university professor by profession - although I find UR equally helpful for home information management and for various types of avocational collection and organization.)

The one big thing lacking in UR, of course, is a proper calendar, and for this I find Vueminder Calendar Pro to be without peer - extremely powerful (much more than Outlook!), highly configurable and user-friendly. Between these two programs, I find that 90% of my information needs are handled in truly optimal fashion (the remaining 10% is the inevitable "CRIMP factor" which seems to affect all of those people who are never satisfied with the great, insisting instead on perfect).

That's very interesting Steve, how a contact centric business can alter your PIM needs. I hadn't thought of that. I can see Chaos Intellect making a lot of sense.

Notetab looks like a very useful alternative to Emacs for those who don't want that learning curve. AskSam looks like a faster Ultra Recall. Aqua looks more like a business tool.

---

Adding dates is a good idea, thanks.

The journalist in me wants to attribute everything on public record willy-nilly, but I suppose that's not appropriate. The only person from here I quoted by name was Alex on the actual page (could've sworn I quoted steve but guess not), although I paraphrased many from here. The source quotes are copied in a bulk text dump with attached source links here http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/reviews-and-testimonials/ which isn't much different than a search engine would do.

Anyway I took out last names from the main page where permission wasn't explicitly given, and if anyone objects to being in the source file I can anonymize that too. Most of the quotes are from BrainStormWFO's existing customer testimonials and therefore already gave permission.

Source file quoted people from here: Steve Z (via Cnet), Alex, Stephen R. Diamond, Matty, Guido

Those of you who find me overly enthusiastic, just consider me to be an annoying kid brother who is gradually "getting it".

Two other things I find essential about Intellect is the ability to run reports on the contacts and its flexibility to customize. This helps me market to clients but also allows me to keep 2400+ names segmented between business and personal. When I want to find emails, tasks, appointments, or memos pertaining to anyone in the db, I just click on their name. For $60, I believe it is a steal for anyone who needs a PIM with a strong email client.

AskSam has two features I find essential; 1. When capturing a web page while doing research for a client, there is a little pop-up form with "Keywords" being on of the fields. I can put the client's name in that field that the web page pertains to. This means the sorted display in AskSam can be by client right away without my having to categorize the newly added pages. It also means I can throw web pages in there at any time for any client if I just happen to stumble upon something. 2. I prefer the way the search results are displayed from a query.

I'll add how I use Brainstorm later.
Steve

JBfromBrainStormWFO wrote:

That's very interesting Steve, how a contact centric business can alter your PIM
needs. I hadn't thought of that. I can see Chaos Intellect making a lot of sense.


Notetab looks like a very useful alternative to Emacs for those who don't want that
learning curve. AskSam looks like a faster Ultra Recall. Aqua looks more like a
business tool.

Thanks Steve, that's fascinating.

Also I changed the username to avoid appearing like I'm advertising.

OK, in response to the complaints I removed last names, added dates, and will work on toning down the hype.

Feel free to let me know if there's anything else you don't like.

http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/265-2/user-reviews-and-comments-on-brainstormwfo/
http://brainstormsw.com/outliner/265-2/

Page hasn't gone to production yet so hopefully no harm done. Will keep those concerns in mind in the future.

I have been reading the posts via RSS for a long time, but this is my first time actually posting!

I develop training content, which is very hierarchical by design (for example, curriculum>courses>lessons>objectives>topics/exercises>tasks>steps>substeps) and I use outliners as part of my development process. I guess what I find myself gravitating toward are any tools that integrate into my workflow and production of content.

Most used tools:

MS PowerPoint - Outline and storyboard my slides, eventually turns into a handout I provide to students and deliver from.
MS Word - Outline my labs/exercises/tasks/steps and so on, eventually turns into a book.
Excel - Tracking and reporting (I wish there was an easy way to outline).
Acrobat Exchange - Combine multiple files into a book.

MS OneNote - Outline and capture anything outside of my main tools used for producing deliverable content.

Not used as much:

MyInfo - Outline analysis and design data collected and use columns to track things like audiences, comments, time estimates, and so on. The problem is that I need to cut-and-paste this information into the above tools and it is one-way only.

In the past:

FrameMaker w/ outliner plugin - same purpose as Word today.

For me, the ideal outliner tool would allow me to work through the entire training development process (analysis, design, development, implementation...) and allow me to publish documents at any point in the process. For example, generate a "Design Document" in the design phase or "Lab Book" in the development phase.

BG

BG welcome!

I am surprised that for developing training material you don't use specialised software developed for this purpose. I understand that we are talking regular training rather than e-courses but still. I am not particularly acquainted with such tools, but stuff that I remember being discussed here in the past includes Scenari http://scenari-platform.org/ and InfoHesiveEP http://www.2brightsparks.com/

Other than that, have you tried using a mindmap program as the main tool for developing the content, and publishing via export to Word or Powerpoint at any time, as you suggest? At least some mindmappers programs provide quite powerful (and well formatted) export capabilities.


bgoutliner wrote:

For me, the ideal outliner tool would allow me to work through the entire training development process (analysis, design, development, implementation...) and allow me to publish documents at any point in the process. For example, generate a ?Design Document? in the design phase or ?Lab Book? in the development phase.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

BG welcome!

I am surprised that for developing training material you don't use
specialised software developed for this purpose. I understand that we are talking
regular training rather than e-courses but still. I am not particularly acquainted
with such tools, but stuff that I remember being discussed here in the past includes
Scenari http://scenari-platform.org/ and InfoHesiveEP
http://www.2brightsparks.com/

Other than that, have you tried using a mindmap
program as the main tool for developing the content, and publishing via export to Word
or Powerpoint at any time, as you suggest? At least some mindmappers programs provide
quite powerful (and well formatted) export capabilities.

I'll second what Alexander said. Back in my training days, I found Inspiration essential. I wouldn't use the mind-mapping part, just the outliner. It exports to Word, and worked well for what I was doing.

For all who took the time to reply - thank you! I see some managed to make their first post, many commented on software I'd long since forgotten about, and one even mentioned a text editor (same as me). The answers gave me the inspiration I needed, hopefully everyone reading found something as well ...

Cassius wrote:

quant wrote:
>Ultra Recall - by far the most complete and versatile PIM there is, IMHO
:) , used 24/7 at
>work/home to store every important information I come across so
that I can
>concentrate on thinking and undertanding instead of remembering -> for
that UR is
>perfect.
---------------------------------------------
I tried
UR, but found its ability to capture Web pages to rather pathetic. Has it improved to,
say, the level of myBase+WebCollect or Surfulater?

I don't know because I don't use anything else than UR, so I can't compare. I use UR+Scrapbook (FF extension) in a 2 step process when I want parts of the web or to remove ads etc, and it works perfectly for me (but I should say I only grab say 2 webs per day on average only).

I use UR+Scrapbook (FF extension) in a 2 step process when I want parts of the web or to remove ads etc, and it works perfectly for me

Could you please say a few more words about it? I am still playing with UR but usually it takes me too much time to work efficiently.

Thanks and best regards,

W.

when I want to grab part of the website, I select it, right-click, save selection. Scrapbook will save it and give me an option to edit it, at which time I usually remove adds etc, there is an easy way to do it in Scrapbook. And then I click on the UR store/link button and it's saved in UR.

Wojciech wrote:

>I use UR+Scrapbook (FF extension) in a 2 step process when I want parts of the web or to
remove ads etc, and it works perfectly for me

Could you please say a few more words
about it? I am still playing with UR but usually it takes me too much time to work
efficiently.

Thanks and best regards,

W.

Here my list (not in a particular order):
- PersonalBrain - my all time favorite since 1999
- Quantrix Modeler - because I like it (http://www.quantrix.com/
- KNIME - because it is perfect to prepare data for reporting (http://www.knime.org/
- Word - because I am used to it
- Excel - because I have to...
- FastStone Capture (Screenshots) - because it does what it is supposed to do perfectly
- Google Chrome - because it is fast

Dominik