Is anyone following the beta development of Biblioscape, and have a sense of whether it will able to compete with IdeaMason once it is released?

Is anyone using Knowledge Workshop, or tryingn out its beta?

Daly

Daly -

I have temporarily given up on Biblioscape - mainly because its pocketpc version no longer works with later ppc O/Ss. Also, for some reason their new forum software makes it very difficult to get support or follow discussions. Just too much like hard work.

Derek

Daly,

Nice to read from you!

No news from KnowledgeWorkshop. They still have the same old news on their website stating that KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta is available for testing. This news has been there for months. I wrote them an e-mail regarding the fact that I can't uninstall KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta because I get an error message. They replied, apologized for the error and assured to fix it. I have never heard from them... KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta is still on my PC because I can't uninstall it. It is very buggy and therefore absolutely useless.

My big new highflyer is Zotero (Firefox Add-in): http://www.zotero.org/
And my daily workhorse is still UltraRecall Professional.

All the best,
Dominik

Dominik, thanks for your response. I hope you're well.

I've played around with the KW beta, but am not impressed.

My thought re Biblioscape and IdeaMason is that Bib may be a strong competitor for it.

I am using both UltraRecall and MyInfo. I like both, but keep getting pulled back to MyInfo.

I probably won't make a final decision until MyInfo's next version is released.

Daly

Dominik Holenstein wrote:

Daly,

Nice to read from you!

No news from KnowledgeWorkshop. They still have the
same old news on their website stating that KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta is available for
testing. This news has been there for months. I wrote them an e-mail regarding the fact
that I can't uninstall KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta because I get an error message. They
replied, apologized for the error and assured to fix it. I have never heard from
them... KnowledgeWorkshop 2 beta is still on my PC because I can't uninstall it. It is
very buggy and therefore absolutely useless.

My big new highflyer is Zotero
(Firefox Add-in): http://www.zotero.org/
And my daily workhorse is still
UltraRecall Professional.

All the best,
Dominik

I am currently evaluating [once again] bibliographic software, as I am working on an extremely research-heavy book. Several years ago, I started off with AskSAM [which I still use for a couple of projects] and Citation, which I have finally abandoned.

I'm currently looking at EndNote [nice interface, but weak on research note management], Scholar's Aid [intriguing software] and the new version of Biblioscape, now 7.1.

Biblioscape is so far the winner, hands down. While it appears that the software creates problems for people upgrading from previous versions, it is so far working well for me. I especially like the note-taking facility, with its tree-structure and simple link-to-reference capability. I have also created a couple of custom Reference entry templates to cover types of references not supported in any of the programs I've surveyed. I was also able to import my Citation database, though I'm still going thru old records to fine-tune them for Biblioscape.

I've just learned about this forum and will be reading back through the discussions -- maybe I'll find something that takes me off in a new direction.

Tom

www.becoming-a-writer-seriously.com

Hi Tom,

I used ScholarAid before as well, later Jabref for managing my bibtex bibliographic database.
I managed to put my whole library to UltraRecall, because it offer attributes, so I reproduced some part of bibtex by creating templates for book, article, ...
It works perfectly, I can add notes, links to pdf source files, links to other works, citations, ...
With "saved search" feature, I can easily search for book, authors, keywords, ... and it perfectly links with my other research notes because I can use internal links to my library

QUANT: Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work, building a specialized database out of pre-existing bibliographic records!

The new Biblioscape [now up to 7.2] seems to do all the things you describe. There's a special field ATTACHMENTS, in which one can put links and URL's to files on your hard-disk or out on the internet. One can past files right into the reference record in the NOTES field. The program also indexes every word, whether in the Reference section or the Notes section, facilitating recovery of data via search. There's built-in facility to browse the internet and grab references.

There's an online forum within which program documentation is kept. One can "subscribe" to new comments [by category even] and receive email notice with link to new comments, a good way to monitor ongoing discussion about the program.

I'm curious? What led you away from Scholar's Aid?

Tom Colvin wrote:

QUANT: Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work, building a specialized database out of
pre-existing bibliographic records!

some work was needed, but not much. In UltraRecall, I created few templates for book, journal, ...
Then I simply exported my existing database to CSV, and imported to UltraRecall where I could assign the relevant attributes.

The new Biblioscape [now up to 7.2] seems to
do all the things you describe. There's a special field ATTACHMENTS, in which one can
put links and URL's to files on your hard-disk or out on the internet. One can past files
right into the reference record in the NOTES field. The program also indexes every
word, whether in the Reference section or the Notes section, facilitating recovery
of data via search. There's built-in facility to browse the internet and grab
references.

this is the only thing that I'm missing, the automatic references and insertion into database from website.

I'm curious? What led you away from Scholar's Aid?

One reason was that I needed bibtex style format for my bibliography which Scholar's Air didn't supported.
But the main reason I think is fact that I want to use one program for my research notes, my bibliography and my time organizer. I had to do some workaround with bibliography, but now I have everything indexed in one place ...