Hello,

I just came across PIM software that I had never heard of before. It is called Debrief and it looks very promising. It comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Standard, and Pro. I'm going to be writing about the Pro version. On the surface it looks much like any three-pane outliner, with a few more buttons. It's got a folder pane, an item pane and a note pane. Debrief provides several methods for cataloging your information:

By folders (or subject)
By type (contact, note, todo, followup, reference)
By keyword (Debrief builds an index of keywords)
By flag (various flags are available, but I don't believe you can create your own)

So far, this is powerful, but not unique. Two additional features help make the program special:

One type of information item is the outline, so you can have a note document that features a hierarchical list. This outlining function is certainly not as sophisticated as the better independent outliners, but it is fairly powerful. Each individual item in the outline can have its own note, with its own subject and flag. That is, what you're doing here is creating independent notes that are associated with items in your outline.

The other feature that seems special and interesting to me is that you can create what they call a card deck. That is, you can select cards from your existing list and organize them how you like, while viewing the results in a new pane which shows the material in a concatenated view.

There are other nice features, too. For example, the program automatically creates a new daily note each new day you start it. You can keep all your notes this way in diary form... view them with the calendar view. Or you can take your notes in the daily note, then organize them (Debrief them, in the program's parlance) at the end of the day with a handy feature that allows you to create new notes from any material that is highlighted.

I've only just downloaded and installed the program, but I'm very impressed so far. There are a few shortcomings, such as no special features for capturing material from other sources other than copy and paste -- even drag and drop does not appear to work.

The price is very reasonable. The Pro version is only $40 US. If you want to check it out, here's the URL

http://debriefnotes.com/products.htm

Steve Z.

Steve,

Looks very interesting. Unfortunately the screenshots display very poorly on my notebook, so it's difficult to get a feel for the program without downloading it (saved from a CRIMP attack :-)).

I often wonder why so many software designers pay so little attention to their screenshots. It seems such a trivial issue. Presumably they are all using ultra-high-definition 22" screens, unlike their potential customers.

Derek

Derek Cornish wrote:

I often wonder why so many software
designers pay so little attention to their screenshots. It seems such a trivial
issue. Presumably they are all using ultra-high-definition 22" screens, unlike
their potential customers.

I vasilate between thinking that its inattention to detail and thinking that its because they want to force you to download it.

In either case I think its a mistake. If I had to rate the things that influence my decision to download a product and try it, the screenshots come up pretty high on the list. If there are no screenshots to give me an idea of what's unique about a program or at least to give me a feel for how it operates and how thoughtfully the interface was put together, its very unlikely I will download it.

Tom S.

I'm afraid this one didn't last long on my PC. Apart from numerous spelling errors within the program, and equally numerous error messages, it only showed dates in American format. Very annoying ....

Graham

Hi.

The other feature that seems special and interesting to
me is that you can create what they call a card deck. That is, you can select cards from
your existing list and organize them how you like, while viewing the results in a new
pane which shows the material in a concatenated view.

In particular, the card deck view made me curious.
However, there was no screenshot on the website displaying that feature. Moreover, the screenshots are absolutely useless.

So, I downloaded the tool and tried to install it. That failed. Tried again, failed again.
Downloaded the tool again - same result.

Then I tried my notebook on which I run an English version of Windows XP (on my working machine I have the German version) - here, everything went right.

Nevertheless, I uninstalled Defrief after a quick look: The interface is much too busy. Too many buttons. I wouldn't want to spend part of my day in such a software.

Franz

Like you, one of the first things I do when I investiage a new piece of software is check out the screenshots on the web site. And I agree that the screen shots on the Debrief site are woefully inadequate. It looks to me like they are using the same screenshots they created for their help document for the web site.

I had no trouble installing the software on my computer, and I have not noticed a lot of mispellings or typgraphical errors in the popups or help documentation, though I have no doubt they are there. An abundance of these mistakes does undermine ones confidence in a program, especially when the software producer is writing in his or her own language. But, as I said, I haven't notice a lot of these yet.

As for there being a lot of buttons on the screen, you can turn some of these features off to reduce the clutter a little bit. However, I don't find the screen all that cluttered... to me the GUI of Debrief is a lot more "tidy" than UltraRecall... admittedly a subjective assessment.

For anyone still interested in Debrief, I can say this so far: This is not the program to replace an information capturing program such as UR or Zoot... it just doesn't have the tools for gathering lots of different information from many sources. But if you build your own information through capturing of your own thoughts, todos, contacts, etc... Debrief is worth a look.

Steve Z.

I installed the program without any difficulty, and have played with it just a little.

My first impression is that Debrief appears to be a reasonably powerful program for its low price-- I was especially attracted by the "card deck" concept-- but that the interface and some of the program features are overly complicated.

The profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a deliberate decision to "minimize the number of mouse clicks" needed to use the program. This may be an admirable goal, but the result here is a visual mishmosh. Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you perform different tasks within the program- for example, as you move from Todo List to Calendar, the Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That's just poor design..

And yes, one can disable some functions to reduce the icon clutter, but there does not seem to be a complete range of menu bar items to substitute for toolbar icons. (eg text format effects). So if you want a simpler toolbar, you have to give up features.

In the end, between usability issues and a learning curve that appears to be unnecessarily steep, my initial response is unenthusiastic. Too bad, because there seem to be some genuinely good ideas here.

Bob Mackreth wrote:

The
profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a deliberate decision to "minimize the
number of mouse clicks" needed to use the program. This may be an admirable goal, but
the result here is a visual mishmosh. Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you
perform different tasks within the program- for example, as you move from Todo List to
Calendar, the Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That's just
poor design..

Maybe it's a poor design choice - but a choice it is, not a blind blunder. Personally, I'm impressed with this innovation. The toolbar buttons on the first row remain unchanged, but the buttons on the second row change with the the module presented. That displays a greater number of relevant buttons than keeping buttons constant, and it keeps irrelevant buttons out of the way, but the price is that items appears on the second row in two different modules, they will sometimes appear in different positions. There is no way around this unfortunate side effect of the design choice. To me it is minor.

There is even a reason for the crowded appearance. Ordinarily buttons are spaced comfortably apart, and when a window is compact, the icons roll off. The buttons are crowded together, because they are intended to all appear even at small window sizes. Make your window big, and the buttons are all on one side.

The trade offs--aesthetics and learning curve because of the number of independent feature---are worth it or not depending on how one values what's being traded. Reducing clicks is not a big deal in a word processor, where you are mostly typing rather than mousing. The more time you have to spend clicking in a program, by its nature, the more valuable becomes the objective of reducing clicks.

And yes, one can disable some functions to reduce the icon clutter,
but there does not seem to be a complete range of menu bar items to substitute for
toolbar icons. (eg text format effects). So if you want a simpler toolbar, you have to
give up features.

In the end, between usability issues and a learning curve that
appears to be unnecessarily steep, my initial response is unenthusiastic. Too bad,
because there seem to be some genuinely good ideas here.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Bob Mackreth wrote:
>The
>profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a
deliberate decision to "minimize the
>number of mouse clicks" needed to use the
program. This may be an admirable goal, but
>the result here is a visual mishmosh.
Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you
>perform different tasks within the
program- for example, as you move from Todo List to
>Calendar, the
Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That's just
>poor
design..

Maybe it's a poor design choice - but a choice it is, not a blind blunder.
Personally, I'm impressed with this innovation.

"Different strokes for different folks" - never more true than with PIMs.