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Suggestions to replace Net Snippets?
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Posted by Barcelona
Aug 10, 2007 at 09:27 PM
Just found this forum today, have long been following the discussion on note-taking software on DonationCoder.
I’d like to tap the collective wisdom here on finding a replacement for the no-longer-supported Net Snippets. NS had one wonderful feature for people like me (I’m a research librarian): the report function. I could clip stuff on the web, organize it, comment on it, and make it into a report, and then emailit to someone else in a universally readable format.
I’ve dabbled with many other information organizers, but none has come close to NS for my needs - at least as far as I know. I have Surfulator, EverNote (my favorite for keeping short notes to myself), and PersonalBrain, and I’ve looked at TopicScape and TexNotes. Probably I am far from understanding all the capabilities of these other programs, but none of them appears to me to do what NS does so well. I still use NS, but I know that since it’s no longer being developed or supported, I will have to give it up someday.
Any advice?
Posted by Derek Cornish
Aug 11, 2007 at 02:54 AM
Barcelona,
Do you use Firefox? If so, two possible add-ons (aka “extensions) worth investigating - and they are both free, of course - would Scrapbook, and Zotero. As a research librarian you might find Zotero especially interesting, and it seems to be under active development, unlike NetSnippets.
NS still works under Firefox, mind you, but you have to make it compatible with later versions of Firefox. This can be done by running another add-on called “Nightly Tester Tools”. (I run it once and then disable it, as it seems to conflict with Zoot32).
I don’t know if Onfolio is still around, but I think probably not. Like Zotero and Netsnippets it also had some bibliographical features, I recall.
Hope that helps,
Derek
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Aug 11, 2007 at 06:03 AM
Barcelona,
I suggest to check these applications:
Web research from Macropol:
http://www.macropool.com/en/index.html
Inquiry Professional Edition 1.6
http://www.metaproducts.com/mp/mpProducts_Detail.asp?id=30
In companion with Firefox: Zotero
http://www.zotero.org/
I am former NetSnippets user as well and I can’t understand why such a great software will not be developed further.
My favorite is Zotero. I have insalled the USB-Firefox version on my stick and added Zotero. So I have my web research tool always with me.
Dominik
Posted by Derek Cornish
Aug 11, 2007 at 03:34 PM
Barcelona,
One other thing. Make sure that whatever you use can search doc and pdf files as well as ordinary htm web pages and text files. Almost any web-capturing software can capture and search htm and text files; it’s a no-brainer. But most of us want more than that.
Few if any of the programs of the type you are looking for can do full-text searches with highlighted results of either MS doc files or pdf files from within their interface. Usually they skate over this problem. As always, there are workarounds, like exporting all the data and using a desktop search program to do the job - but as the cost of considerable inconvenience.
Web Research has some workarounds, using pdftotext, or allowing access to its database by the Windows Desktop Search. I don’t know what other similar programs are doing, but if they can’t handle indexing and searching of pdf files then IMO they are no use for serious research.
What’s the use of being able to capture and store pdfs if they can’t be indexed and searched by the program? At least NetSnippets and Scrapbook store their files in their native formats in the Windows filing system. That way any DTS program can index and search them.
Maybe Ultrarecall or MyBase handle pdf files better. If so they could provide other options.
Good luck, and let us know what you decide to use.
Derek
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Aug 11, 2007 at 08:06 PM
Barcelona and others,
Check this software as well: Internet Research Scout - it’s free and very similar to Net Snippets. Further, it allows to create reports of the collected snippets including academic citation.
http://www.bytescout.com/internetresearchscout.html
Dominik