What software do you use/would recommend for storing text you may not refer to again for possibly more than a year, but want to keep somewhere it can be easily found when the time comes?

Lately I've been having a hell of a time using Google or newspaper/magazine site's search engines to find something I read two years ago and suddenly remembered and would now like to refer to again.

Windows or Mac? For the Mac, there are Together, Eaglefiler and DevonThink. I've recently started to use DevonThink Pro Office intensively. It's not perfect, but it's still pretty good in all the key areas: capture, storage and (particularly) search.

Hi shattered,

I just made a thread to answer this question, and for me the product that fits the bill is Ultra Recall.

You can dump in text, .doc, .pdf, webpages, email, anything and everything, and it UR indexes the data and provides cross referenced search that is fast. You can also put the data in organized folders (ie. nodes) that are logically linked to more than one topic (ie. hybrid car article could be under "cars" and "environment") as well as tag articles with keywords. Searching allows you to add any number of criterion, for example by keyword, by text, article type, field code, etc. A "notes" pane means you can add your own text/review to the document for easy recollection or searching. Search results can also be cycled through and the query text is highlighted, and searches can be saved which is nice if you always want articles related to a certain topic handy.

The other product that has these capabilities is Mybase, which I used to use as it is very robust although rather slow in development. The search is not on the same level as UR, however, as it lacks Boolean search and multiple input, and this may be a problem as your repository grows. For webpages only, Web Research 3 worked incredibly well for me, and if UR didn't duplicate it's functionality I would still use it.

Again, this is the product I would recommend according to the way I work, and others may have other opinions. UR has a slight learning curve as not all of it's features are immediately clear, but it is worth the payoff when you get over the hump. It's kind of interesting that you asked the question as you did, because one main use I have for UR is to do precisely what you ask: archive webpages and articles for later reference. Of course the other uses don't hurt either!

Best, /Pavi

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

What software do you use/would recommend for storing text you may not refer to again
for possibly more than a year, but want to keep somewhere it can be easily found when the
time comes?

Lately I've been having a hell of a time using Google or
newspaper/magazine site's search engines to find something I read two years ago and
suddenly remembered and would now like to refer to again.

I feel your pain. There are plenty of programs of database quality to handle text storage and retrieval. If it's just text (I prefer that way too), here's a couple:

AskSam; http://www.asksam.com I use it and like it a lot. But it will cost $$.

Free: Open Office or LibreOffice.com have databases that would work just fine.

Steve

If the information I collect is very miscellaneous or random, I will put it into Zoot (when at my office PC) or DevonThink on my Macbook. But if it fits neatly into existing categories of interest, it goes into my Commonplace Book "Brain" in PersonalBrain. There are two reasons I use PB: 1. As a Java application it runs on my office PC and on my Macbook, and with the webBrain sync feature, I can keep my "Brains" in sync; and 2. I find the visual linkage helpful in conceptualizing my information. PersonalBrain also has a deceptively effective search tool, so it's fast an easy to find anything in a Brain, even if it is buried deep down in the hierarchy.

It does sometimes take more work to use PB in this manner, as it does not have a quick capture feature (like the Zooter). But it isn't too difficult. If I want to capture a web page for future reference, I just drag the URL from the address into the open Brain and drop it under the parent thought most appropriate. If I don't know where to put it immediately, I keep a thought called "In Box" available and can drop it there. That creates a new thought with the web link. I can then cut and paste any of the text into the thought's note. A nice feature of PB is the ability to clip a screenshot and associate that with a thought, which opens when you mouse over it -- that's a fast way to capture, say, an address. However, unlike OneNote, PersonalBrain does not perform an OCR on the image.

I'm not recommending PersonalBrain for your solution, just pointing it out as another option.

Steve Z.

What software do you use/would recommend for storing text you may not refer to again
for possibly more than a year, but want to keep somewhere it can be easily found when the
time comes?

I am quite enamored of Smereka.

Just yesterday, it took about 5 seconds to find a document that I made last year.



JasonE

ebaughjason@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/jasonebaugh

You really don't have to wait for anyone to reply to your question as this forum is almost entirely devoted to everyone's favorite (or not so) favorite solution to the problem that you experiencing.

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

What software do you use/would recommend for storing text you may not refer to again
for possibly more than a year, but want to keep somewhere it can be easily found when the
time comes?

Lately I've been having a hell of a time using Google or
newspaper/magazine site's search engines to find something I read two years ago and
suddenly remembered and would now like to refer to again.

Plain text emacs files for my full article quotations. I keep several ranked by priority of info: epic, elite, quote, reference.

Also I may briefly summarize in my emacs "notes" file, which eventually gets sorted into BrainStorm

I may split up the article across multiple of these to highlight key sections but still preserve the whole article in "reference"

Emacs has full lisp search capability, but I never use it... scanning with normal search across a few keywords is fast enough.

The important thing is this system never gets in the way, so I can hoover up tons of info, giving me lots of redundancy.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

If the information I collect is very miscellaneous or random, I will put it into Zoot
(when at my office PC) or DevonThink on my Macbook. But if it fits neatly into existing
categories of interest, it goes into my Commonplace Book "Brain" in PersonalBrain.
There are two reasons I use PB: 1. As a Java application it runs on my office PC and on my
Macbook, and with the webBrain sync feature, I can keep my "Brains" in sync; and 2. I
find the visual linkage helpful in conceptualizing my information. PersonalBrain
also has a deceptively effective search tool, so it's fast an easy to find anything in a
Brain, even if it is buried deep down in the hierarchy.

It does sometimes take more
work to use PB in this manner, as it does not have a quick capture feature (like the
Zooter). But it isn't too difficult. If I want to capture a web page for future
reference, I just drag the URL from the address into the open Brain and drop it under the
parent thought most appropriate. If I don't know where to put it immediately, I keep a
thought called "In Box" available and can drop it there. That creates a new thought
with the web link. I can then cut and paste any of the text into the thought's note. A nice
feature of PB is the ability to clip a screenshot and associate that with a thought,
which opens when you mouse over it -- that's a fast way to capture, say, an address.
However, unlike OneNote, PersonalBrain does not perform an OCR on the image.

I'm
not recommending PersonalBrain for your solution, just pointing it out as another
option.

Steve Z.

May not go with PersonalBrain, but you've given me something more helpful, the "digital commonplace book," which I realize is exactly what I'm trying to build.

Its a simple solution, and it may not exactly meet your needs, but Diigo has been evolving from a bookmark program, and as it is pretty much web browser agnostic, its available almost everywhere. Simplenote is another cross-platform program, but I am not sure it will store more than notes.

--Ken

I'd say it depends if you want something more simple or something more powerful.

For simply storing web clippings for later retrieval, I think the free Cintanotes is very appealing. Just hit a hot key, and the text you selected in your browser is stored in the CintaNotes database along with the URL, and you can tag your clippings anyway you want.

http://cintanotes.com/

jimspoon wrote:

I'd say it depends if you want something more simple or something more powerful.

For simply storing web clippings for later retrieval, I think the free Cintanotes is
very appealing.

I concur; for more complex notes --rich text, images, etc.- I would suggest Evernote. The free version should be more than enough.