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Zoot 6 - the solution ?
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 5, 2011 at 03:50 PM
Welcome aboard.
I think it is inaccurate to view Zoot as now being focussed on a Twitter/Facebook development path. Zoot XT has many enhancements, and I do not believe Tom Davis has shirked the core functionality of Zoot. I do agree that engaing the cloud as he has may slow future development, but development has long been slow, even before the advent of the cloud. I’m not saying I’m thrilled about the cloud-focus, and I’m sure you are right that it will absorb more development time, but at least it ensures development will continue.
And, as I said, there is a lot more to Zoot XT than cloud-support.
Steve Z.
Slartibartfarst wrote:
>This is an interesting thread. I enjoyed reading all the posts.
>I am new to this forum
>(this is my 2nd post today), but I have been reading it in my feed aggregator (Google
>reader) for quite a while. I rarely visit the forum.
>
>*@Mark*: re your post above about Zoot and
>Facebook/twitter.
>I had always rather hoped that Zoot might be the ultimate PIM for
>me and could be taken by its developer in a direction that would eliminate the
>unavoidable and inefficient overlap and duplication that is inherent in the above
>set of tools that I am using. However, if it now seems that his greatest worry (?) is to
>keep it in step and integrated with the dynamically changing APIs for “social
>networks”, then I fail to comprehend the rationale for this.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 5, 2011 at 04:46 PM
I beg to disagree. I believe that Tom has taken the only reasonable route to maintain his application relevant in a networking world: to link it with services like gmail, twitter and, yes, facebook (apparently facebook messaging competes with email in the number of messages sent worldwide). Yes, significant investment will be needed, but the alternative would be to lose the ever-expanding clientele which expects every software they purchase to be also available for web, iPhone, iPad, Android etc…
Providing such connectivity expands Zoot’s capabilities and accessibility without needing to develop for additional platforms.
I should note that a very significant percentage of software discussed here which I adore, is becoming more and more useless for me because I cannot use it in a collaborative setting.
Further, re social networking: I belong to a generation that did not have it or missed it, but now find that I need to learn it and use it, or else my own work will become largely irrelevant. I appreciate it when tools that are familiar to me (Zoot actually is not) evolve to cater for these changing circumstances.
Mark wrote:
>Another thing that discourages
>me is that the developer, Tom Davis, is building in all these hooks to web services like
>Facebook and Twitter, which I think is a mistake. Given how long it’s taken him to
>produce this latest version, that says to me that an inordinate amount of his future
>development time will be spent trying to keep it operating with those constantly
>changing APIs instead of on Zoot’s core information-handling tasks.
Posted by Susanne
Aug 5, 2011 at 06:03 PM
What both Alexander and Steve said. While I too, am of the generation that grew up without social media - in fact - even without PCs (!) - I love being able to communicate with friends and family on other continents so conveniently.
One of the main requirements today is to be able to access your information wherever you are - I find myself increasingly impatient with software that expects me to always be at my one PC. So Tom’s persistence in massaging Zoot to cooperate with gmail, and especially Evernote is, IMHO, to be applauded. Apart from the fact that Zoot XT (6) has made some truly remarkable improvements and added functionality.
(uhm, ah… does it show that I like it? ;-)
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>.... a very significant percentage of software discussed here which I adore, is
>becoming more and more useless for me because I cannot use it in a collaborative
>setting.
>
>Further, re social networking: I belong to a generation that did not have
>it or missed it, but now find that I need to learn it and use it, or else my own work will
>become largely irrelevant. I appreciate it when tools that are familiar to me (Zoot
>actually is not) evolve to cater for these changing circumstances.
>
>
Posted by JBfrom
Aug 5, 2011 at 06:27 PM
In my experience, collaboration-ware tends to be insufficient for personal use, and vice versa. That’s sort of inherent - personal flexibility is lost with cross platform and cross-person availability and 1-1 correspondence.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 5, 2011 at 07:29 PM
I agree, but Zoot is not collaboration-ware; it is a PIM which connects to external communication channels. Much of the software we discuss here does this to an extent, either directly or indirectly. E.g. Outlook, Chaos Intellect and Daisho directly integrate email with contact and task management. By contrast, UltraRecall can link to Outlook emails rather than include an email client.
Zoot has taken the direct route, which in my view is the hardest; as Tom himself noted, Zoot is many apps in one, and each one of those (e.g. the email client) represents a formidable task in itself. It is also very ambitious, including mail, RSS, social media, you name it. But, if it manages to be at least good at most of what it does, the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.
The concept is not completely new. Omea Pro (no longer developed) integrated just about every channel there was at the time. The challenge is significant though; I can almost compare it with having Google (Mail, Calendar, Reader, Groups, etc.) installed in your PC, in terms of the extended integration of services.
JBfrom wrote:
>In my experience, collaboration-ware tends to be insufficient for personal use, and
>vice versa. That’s sort of inherent - personal flexibility is lost with cross
>platform and cross-person availability and 1-1 correspondence.