Like many of the rest of you on this forum, I've played around with various note-taking programs through the years, and I thought it might useful (certainly to myself and possibly to others) to take stock of where I stand right now.

I was an early adopter of Evernote, when it was still a Windows-only product, and was an enthusiastic user of it for a couple of years. Then one morning I woke up to discover that a new version had been released that was not exactly an upgrade; the program had been seriously dumbed down in order to make it run on various mobile platforms. To make matters worse, the new CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin, flippantly remarked that he saw his customer base as the "lazy slobs" of the world, and "power users" became a term of thinly-veiled sarcasm in communications from the EN staff.

I was baffled by all of this, but I tried to limp along with EN for a few more months, until I finally had to admit to myself that I couldn't continue without some of the now-missing features such as smart folders and internal links. Libin (who seems to be a very charming and charismatic figure, incidentally) kept making clever-sounding pronouncements about an external brain and remembering everything, and there was much excited talk about popping photographs of wine bottle labels into EN, but none of this seemed to have much to do with my life. I'm *not* trying to remember everything. I'm a writer/scholar, and I am constantly taking notes from published sources and unpublished documents, trying to organize and make sense out of those notes, and then attempting to synthesize this complex material into a new text. Increasingly Evernote seemed to be an excellent program for storing data but not for organizing it (or at least not organizing it very well).

So I launched a search for an Evernote substitute, and I finally settled on MyInfo. At first it seemed far less flexible than EN, and I missed the lively community on the EN forum. What worried me even more was that although MI had been around for a long time and had a reputation for steady (if sometimes slow) development, it seemed to be the work of one fellow in Bulgaria. That made me a bit nervous. What if he were to lose interest? What if he were to be hit by a bus? On the other hand, could one solid, reliable programmer in eastern Europe be any worse than a slightly manic company in California that seemed to have gone crazy over smartphones and snapshots of wine bottles?

I laboriously moved most of my old notes into MyInfo and have been happily using it ever since. Petko, the developer, has proven to be responsive and helpful (but I confess I still sometimes have irrational anxieties about the state of his health), and MI has a lot of features that have come to seem indispensable to me. And it also offers a clean, attractive interface: it simply *looks good* on the screen, and that's important to me, because I use it regularly every day. I now rely very heavily on the custom attributes (especially the dates, since my writing is mainly historical, and occasionally I want to organize all my notes chronologically), the cloning, the hoisting, and the cross-linking (which works down to the paragraph level). Above all, even though I admire Evernote's brilliant system of tagging, I understand now that I need a tree hierarchy for my notes, because that is just the way my brain works.

I continue to use Evernote for information that doesn't require a high level of organization (travel notes, for example), but for any data of real complexity -- i.e., a large body of notes for an article, a book, or a lecture -- I always fall back on MyInfo. I realize there are other choices available (Zoot and Ultra Recall tempt me in my more susceptible moods), but MyInfo does the job for me nowadays, supplemented by Evernote for all the random bits of information that float through everyone's life -- or when I feel like a lazy slob.

Hi WSP,

You may have noticed that I just created a thread about UltraRecall. Like you, I was using a few tools, including OneNote, Mybase, EPIM to keep everything together.

However, putting in some time and effort to learn UR has me convinced that it replaces other tools very well, even if there are a few limitations. Integrating notes, documents (ie. PDF, docs), email & tasks (automatically sync'd to Outlook), web clippings, etc. with cross referenced search is incredibly useful.

Having said that, a few features could be added, such as:
- an attachments window
- ability to dock the keywords window
- multiple nodes open
- versioning
- better table support

Some of these are planned for the next release (from the information I've read on their forum).

I highly recommend that you give UR another look. I passed it over a few times because I thought it lacked some things that I needed, only to discover recently that due to the customization potential, nearly anything is possible. Now I am kicking myself as I have to move mountains of data from different programs/files/folders over.

Best, /Pavi

WSP wrote:

Like many of the rest of you on this forum, I've played around with various note-taking
programs through the years, and I thought it might useful (certainly to myself and
possibly to others) to take stock of where I stand right now.

(Zoot and Ultra Recall tempt me in

my more susceptible moods), but MyInfo does the job for me nowadays, supplemented by
Evernote for all the random bits of information that float through everyone's life --
or when I feel like a lazy slob.

Thanks for the suggestion. I keep a careful eye on Ultra Recall developments, but there are moments when even I feel a little weary of my note-taking-programs promiscuity. (Perhaps I could suggest that acronym, NTPP, as an alternative to CRIMP on this forum.) I downloaded a trial of UR a year or two ago, and my first impression was that it was tremendously powerful but rather nerdy in tone. What I like about MyInfo is that despite its hidden complexity, the surface is attractive and uncluttered.

Still, I'll try to keep an open mind.

I am a user of MyInfo, and also one who likes it very much.

Petko is a very responsive, and really open to new ideas. Sometimes, I also worry about his being a one-person operation.

His openness has lead to speedy implementation of hoisting, and the current ability to have more than one window open at a time, although at this stage the second window does not have editing capability.

I think MyInfo offers the ability to combine folders in the tree and tags in a good way.

One feature I'd like to see is the ability to have different column sets for different groups of folder within the same file.

I've emailed Phil Libin a few times, and found him to be responsive in terms of getting back to me quickly. The Evernote dumbing down upset quite a few people, but the program has retraced some of those steps, which is good.

A deal breaker for me is that the program lacked highlighting. I brought that to Phil's attention, noting how important that can be to information workers, and he said straight away it would be added.

A lot of my reading involves PDFs, and so now I am using Mendeley for that.

Web clipping - my favourite is Surfulater. I've used Springpad because of its cloud capability - it is a possible EN replacement. However, it does not keep web metadata the way Surfulater or EN do. It can take one back to the specific web page a clip is made from, but it doesn't show the specific url. So for citing purposes, it is necessary to go back to the original page. I've advised Springpad of this problem, and expect they'll deal with it soon.

EN took a real gamble a few years ago, and it paid off for them big time. However, as a result, they pissed off a lot of their original users and, it seems, their development team still don't realize fully all that serious information users require to make their work easier. In the process of trying to explain, there have been some nasty exchanges on the EN forums, often involving people who hide behind pseudonyms (easier to snark if no one knows who you really are).

Surfulater is a program to watch. I have watched Neville develop it over the years, and have great respect for his creativity and openness. He is, I believe, considering cloud capability for Surfulater - lack of cloud is why I used Evernote. However, I now have Surfulater running on my two computers, with data files in Dropbox - and that is sufficient cloud for my purposes. It works well.

Daly

WSP wrote:

Like many of the rest of you on this forum, I've played around with various note-taking
programs through the years, and I thought it might useful (certainly to myself and
possibly to others) to take stock of where I stand right now.

I was an early adopter of
Evernote, when it was still a Windows-only product, and was an enthusiastic user of it
for a couple of years. Then one morning I woke up to discover that a new version had been
released that was not exactly an upgrade; the program had been seriously dumbed down
in order to make it run on various mobile platforms. To make matters worse, the new CEO
of Evernote, Phil Libin, flippantly remarked that he saw his customer base as the
"lazy slobs" of the world, and "power users" became a term of thinly-veiled sarcasm in
communications from the EN staff.

I was baffled by all of this, but I tried to limp
along with EN for a few more months, until I finally had to admit to myself that I
couldn't continue without some of the now-missing features such as smart folders and
internal links. Libin (who seems to be a very charming and charismatic figure,
incidentally) kept making clever-sounding pronouncements about an external brain
and remembering everything, and there was much excited talk about popping
photographs of wine bottle labels into EN, but none of this seemed to have much to do
with my life. I'm *not* trying to remember everything. I'm a writer/scholar, and I am
constantly taking notes from published sources and unpublished documents, trying
to organize and make sense out of those notes, and then attempting to synthesize this
complex material into a new text. Increasingly Evernote seemed to be an excellent
program for storing data but not for organizing it (or at least not organizing it very
well).

So I launched a search for an Evernote substitute, and I finally settled on
MyInfo. At first it seemed far less flexible than EN, and I missed the lively community
on the EN forum. What worried me even more was that although MI had been around for a long
time and had a reputation for steady (if sometimes slow) development, it seemed to be
the work of one fellow in Bulgaria. That made me a bit nervous. What if he were to lose
interest? What if he were to be hit by a bus? On the other hand, could one solid, reliable
programmer in eastern Europe be any worse than a slightly manic company in California
that seemed to have gone crazy over smartphones and snapshots of wine bottles?

I
laboriously moved most of my old notes into MyInfo and have been happily using it ever
since. Petko, the developer, has proven to be responsive and helpful (but I confess I
still sometimes have irrational anxieties about the state of his health), and MI has a
lot of features that have come to seem indispensable to me. And it also offers a clean,
attractive interface: it simply *looks good* on the screen, and that's important to
me, because I use it regularly every day. I now rely very heavily on the custom
attributes (especially the dates, since my writing is mainly historical, and
occasionally I want to organize all my notes chronologically), the cloning, the
hoisting, and the cross-linking (which works down to the paragraph level). Above
all, even though I admire Evernote's brilliant system of tagging, I understand now
that I need a tree hierarchy for my notes, because that is just the way my brain
works.

I continue to use Evernote for information that doesn't require a high level
of organization (travel notes, for example), but for any data of real complexity --
i.e., a large body of notes for an article, a book, or a lecture -- I always fall back on
MyInfo. I realize there are other choices available (Zoot and Ultra Recall tempt me in
my more susceptible moods), but MyInfo does the job for me nowadays, supplemented by
Evernote for all the random bits of information that float through everyone's life --
or when I feel like a lazy slob.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

I am a user of MyInfo, and also one who likes it very much.
One feature I'd like to see is the
ability to have different column sets for different groups of folder within the same
file.

FWIW, Zoot has had this ability for the past decade.

I have licenses for Zoot, UR, and MyInfo. I admire MI a lot, but its features are redundant to other applications I rely upon (OneNote and PersonalBrain). I tried swithcing to UR during Zoot's doldrums, but I have just never warmed up to it. Zoot, it seems to me, is superior in its flexibility and ease of organization. Zoot is not without its short comings. I do find the editor in UR better than even the new version of Zoot. But in terms of collecting information and being able to organize it as necessary, I don't think Zoot can be beat.

Steve Z.

Just a few more thoughts about the troubling non-hierarchical aspect of Evernote. EN (the Windows version, at least) has recently introduced internote linking, and lately I've been doing some experiments to see whether that feature can be made to replace, at least in part, a hierarchical tree.

Let me give an example. I have an EN notebook devoted to notes about family history. (I also use family-tree-generating software, but these are more miscellaneous notes that don't fit well into a family-tree program.) At the moment, in EN, if I want to search for the major notes dealing with one particular person, it's tricky. I can of course search for both first and last names, but in some notes the name may be rendered differently (an initial instead of a first name, for instance), and unless I use some very convoluted note-naming procedures, EN, after a search, will not display the notes in any coherent order. Furthermore, I can't create a tag for each of my ancestors, because that would make the tag list too long.

In a hierarchical program like MyInfo, it's easy to organize this sort of material. In the tree I set up a node for "John Doe" and then create a series of sub-notes in any order that I want.

What I am trying to do at the moment is to replicate that procedure in Evernote.

So I create a new note in EN called something like "John Doe: Summary" in which I place links to all the major notes about Doe, in an order of my choice. (I can also add an explanatory phrase about each linked note if its title is too cryptic.) It's slightly more time-consuming to do this in EN than in MyInfo, but it does seem to work reasonably well, and it then gives me all the additional benefits of Evernote (cross-platform syncing, excellent tagging system, etc.). The example above is a deliberately simple one; I can imagine creating a more elaborate note of cross-links that would constitute an outline for an article or a chapter in a book.

Has anyone else done any experiments along these lines?

FWIW, Evernote does have a hierarchical tree, for organising tags. For me this is a direct equivalent of a 'classic' hierarchical tree allowing clones (i.e. an item being included in more than one branches of the tree) given that an Evernote item can have multiple tags.

With tags, the tree paradigm is turned on its head in a way, but I find that I can do any kind of hierachical organising that I would with, say, UltraRecall or Surfulater. Well, with a couple of caveats:

- All tag names have to be unique; e.g. you can't have a Software tag under a PC category and a Mac category too. Solution: PC (parent tag) \ PC Software (child tag), Mac (parent tag) \ Mac Software (child tag)

- You can't see the actual items on the tree, only in the separate list pane. However, I find this an advantage rather than a handicap, since you can have large numbers of items without operpopulating the tree. It is the same approach used by Zoot, Sycon IDEA! and mail clients.


WSP wrote:

Just a few more thoughts about the troubling non-hierarchical aspect of Evernote. EN
(the Windows version, at least) has recently introduced internote linking, and
lately I've been doing some experiments to see whether that feature can be made to
replace, at least in part, a hierarchical tree.

Yes, I'm aware that it's possible to arrange tags hierarchically in the Evernote tag list, but that doesn't solve all of my problems. Here's an example (from the same family tree notes I described above):

It's easy in EN to create a tag for the "Doe" family. But under Doe I want to be able to create subcategories for "John Doe" and "Jane Doe." That is where the difficulties start. In theory I could do that, but in a large body of notes on anyone's family history, creating a tag for each individual would produce an intolerably long list of tags, especially since EN forces us to put all notebooks into a single file. In MyInfo I can separate my family notes from other kinds of notes very easily (and then search across more than one file if I wish), but in EN the tags of all those combined notebooks can quickly get out of control. I have thousands of notes in EN (mainly a legacy from using earlier versions of it), and my tag list is already stupefying large.

WSP wrote:

creating a tag for each individual would
produce an intolerably long list of tags, especially since EN forces us to put all
notebooks into a single file. In MyInfo I can separate my family notes from other kinds
of notes very easily (and then search across more than one file if I wish), but in EN the
tags of all those combined notebooks can quickly get out of control. I have thousands
of notes in EN (mainly a legacy from using earlier versions of it), and my tag list is
already stupefying large.

Our situation is actually not very different: I use Evernote for both professional and private items. I have copied as tags all the folder hierarchies I have used in other systems (file system and PIMs) for compatibility, so I too have a very large number of tags. My solution is the following:

- Tags: organised hierarchically within separate 'superfolders' representing major areas e.g. work, personal, family etc. The superfolder names, as well as those of the tags themselves, begin with a special character depending on the area; '!' for personal, '$' for work, '^' for family... These characters are quite intuitive for me, and also sort nicely.

- Notebooks: separate notebooks (actually notebook 'stacks') for each area, with the same naming conventions as above.

I don't mind that EN keeps all notebooks in one file; I just expand only the stacks that I am using. I can then select to search/filter only within those.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will do some experiments along these lines.

I feel that I ought to like and use Evernote more than I do, but I confess that I still feel some lingering uneasiness about the way the company abandoned its most loyal users a few years ago. It's a brilliant piece of software, but the company itself has always struck me as unpredictable and unreliable. I notice that the latest manifestation of this is that they are going on a wild buying binge. (Apparently now, with Skitch, I will be able to add comic remarks to my photographs. Right -- just what I need.) Any firm that claims it is creating a universal permanent memory for the human race (or whatever their current phrase is) probably ought to be viewed with some suspicion. I don't want software with cosmic powers; I just need a decent, functional note-taking program, for heaven's sake.

Furthermore, I can?t create a tag for each of my ancestors, because that would make the tag list too long.
In a hierarchical program like MyInfo, it?s easy to organize this sort of material. In the tree I set up a node for ?John Doe? and then create a series of sub-notes in any order that I want.

It's odd that you think it would make the tag list too long to create one tag per person, and yet you are comfortable making one none per person in MyInfo. Since, as has been pointed out, tags can be folded into a hierarchy just like nodes, why is one of these more cumbersome than the other?

It seems that the solution to your issue would indeed be one tag per person, under a major tag called "ancestors" or something similar. You would never have to see these tags unless you open the ancestors tag folder, so it wouldn't matter that the list was long.

I appreciate the suggestions. I will do some experiments with heavier tagging in Evernote.

A long-winded postscript to this discussion.

Several months ago I decided to follow my own advice by trying to use Evernote for all my note-taking for a book-in-progress. In many ways, I found EN admirable: it was extremely easy to move information of any kind (especially a number of large PDF files) into my EN notebook, searches were speedy, and the tagging system was really outstanding. Best of all, the inter-note links made it possble for me to create several "outline" notes in which I laid out some rough outlines of my projected book, with links to particular notes.

Then, suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, EN stopped syncing. The obvious thing to do was to reinstall the program, but I was under the impression that uninstalling might erase all EN data on one's computer and that the data would then be downloaded from EN's servers again. However, this summer I'm in a remote French village with extremely slow wi-fi, and I was convinced that downloading all my EN data (which was swollen with thousands of notes created some years ago) would take several days.

At this point I created an EN ticket and received, within a day or two, a message that I should uninstall and reinstall -- but with no response to my questions about the problem of downloading all that data from their servers. Out of curiosity, I checked to see what the FAQ on the EN website might have to say about my problem, and I was amused to discover that the message I had received from the EN help desk was merely a verbatim copy-and-paste from their FAQ. In other words, the EN folks were pleasantly courteous but on automatic pilot.

As I thought about this more, I realized that though EN is an outstanding program, there are some things about it that make me uneasy. On the most superficial level, I am annoyed by their silly advertising slogans (such as "remember everything" -- what sane human being would want to do that?).

I noticed that Phil Libin, the CEO, remarked in a recent interview that EN is not meant to be a note-taking program at all; instead it is an instrument for recording all your memories of things like wine and food and people you meet. Sorry, Phil, but I already have vivid recollections of my meals, thank you very much; what I need is a program for gathering and organizing information for my writing projects.

EN's decision to put all one's data into a single file also makes me deeply uneasy. Yes, of course, there is always the backup in the cloud when things go wrong, but, as in my case, it's not always easily accessible. One humungous file seems to me asking for trouble.

Finally (I hope this doesn't reveal a dark streak of paranoia in me), EN's monstrously large customer base -- something like 35 million, I believe -- makes it a very inviting target for warrentless fishing expeditions by law-enforcement agencies. Libin and the other EN executives keep reassuring us that our data is our own and will not be exploited in any illegitimate way, but EN's leadership will inevitably change in the future (or the company may be bought out), and inevitably there will be changes in policies. At some point it may be very tempting for EN executives to try to mine all that data (just think of it: enormous files by millions of users containing an infinite variety of personal information) for commercial purposes -- a la Facebook.

I continue to believe that my syncing problem with be resolved eventually (probably when a new version of EN is released, or perhaps just when I get access to better Internet service at the end of the summer), and I will continue to use EN for lots of miscellaneous bits of random information. But the notes for my book have now been shifted back into MyInfo, that wonderful, solid, unflashy two-pane note-taker.

Today I had a very small technical problem with MyInfo. I sent a note to Petko, the developer, and within an hour (on a Sunday afternoon, no less) I had a friendly and helpful reply from him. I've decided there's a lot to be said for small software companies.

Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the update. I can definitely understand your concerns. Hereby some complementary info and comments.


WSP wrote:

Then, suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, EN stopped syncing. The obvious thing
to do was to reinstall the program, but I was under the impression that uninstalling
might erase all EN data on one's computer and that the data would then be downloaded
from EN's servers again.

I haven't re-installed Evernote in a while, but unless something has changed radically, you should be able to use the existing local copy of your database. You should be given the option upon installation.

To be on the safe side, in EN go to Tools / Options / Open Database Folder and you will be taken to the folder which contains the main files. Make a copy of the .exb file (you can also copy the rest if you wish, though they are normally re-created automatically).

If for some reason you are not given the choice to use the existing file upon re-installation, after this is completed you can exit Evernote (completely, not just minimise to tray) and replace the empty database files with your copies.

Today I had a very small technical problem with MyInfo. I sent
a note to Petko, the developer, and within an hour (on a Sunday afternoon, no less) I had
a friendly and helpful reply from him. I've decided there's a lot to be said for small
software companies.

I couldn't agree more with your conclusion.

FYI, another similar program discussed here is Rightnote, which now offers the ability to create notes that sync with Evernote:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4159/0/rightnote-has-evernote-cloud-syncing-notes
(This only works with notes created in Rightnote, at least for the time being)

Alexander, thanks for your comments. I'm afraid that for the sake of brevity I offered a much abridged version of the Evernote story. The first thing I did was to back up my EN data file on a flash drive. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled EN, but contrary to my expectations (based on something I had read on the EN forum), the reinstallation did not erase the big data file. Nevertheless, it still would not sync.

Having now shifted my crucial information back into MyInfo, I don't have the patience at the moment to try to understand the technical explanation for the EN problem. (I lost the better part of a week's work fussing over it.) As I said, I will look at it again next month when I have speedier Internet access.

Meanwhile, I am happily recording information for my book in MyInfo.

Bill

FWIW I have MyInfo files in Dropbox - so can access them on my laptop and the little netbook which I carry with me to the library. DB looks after the synching and I have essentially the same convenience Evernote provides.

Having said that, I use EN a great deal and have never had a problem with it. At some point it may be worthwhile to contact EN again, making it clear that this time you want something more than a cut and paste response.

In any event, I'm glad you're back on track for your book. Wish I could say the same for mine. :)

Daly,
who awaits w excitement Neville's new Surfulater for the cloud

WSP wrote:

Alexander, thanks for your comments. I'm afraid that for the sake of brevity I offered
a much abridged version of the Evernote story. The first thing I did was to back up my EN
data file on a flash drive. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled EN, but contrary to my
expectations (based on something I had read on the EN forum), the reinstallation did
not erase the big data file. Nevertheless, it still would not sync.

Having now
shifted my crucial information back into MyInfo, I don't have the patience at the
moment to try to understand the technical explanation for the EN problem. (I lost the
better part of a week's work fussing over it.) As I said, I will look at it again next
month when I have speedier Internet access.

Meanwhile, I am happily recording
information for my book in MyInfo.

Bill