Black Hole Organizer is a new one to me, but I did a search here and found that it has been mentioned a few times (albeit you could count them on one hand). It's coming to BitsDuJour for $4.95. It's usually $25. Just thought I would mention it. It seems a lot of outliners make it to bits at some very good prices. I'm still waiting for another RightNote sale at BitsDuJour but thought I would mention this in case there's interest at five bucks.

http://www.starresoft.com/bho.htm

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/black-hole-organizer/

Very interesting to see Black Hole Organizer being promoted. I seriously looked at purchasing it years ago - as in the late 1990's I believe. That's a good thing to have it alive and well.

The publisher of Black Hole is Lincoln Beach Software; http://www.lincolnbeach.com/blackhole.asp They've been around a long time - long enough to have moved from Chicago to Missouri http://www.asp-software.org/membership/membersearch.asp?keyword=Black+Hole+Organizer&Search=Search

I liked the program. It was solid and did what it was supposed to do. Marketed to small business people so lots of "changes" are not appreciated.

Answering this post did lead me back in time so to speak and rediscovering some other resources. For more possible notes, outliner, etc style of software I think perusing the Association of Software Professionals website at http://www.asp-software.org would be useful.

Steve

Donovan wrote:

Black Hole Organizer is a new one to me, but I did a search here and
found that it has been mentioned a few times (albeit you could count
them on one hand). It's coming to BitsDuJour for $4.95. It's usually
$25. Just thought I would mention it. It seems a lot of outliners make
it to bits at some very good prices. I'm still waiting for another
RightNote sale at BitsDuJour but thought I would mention this in case
there's interest at five bucks.

http://www.starresoft.com/bho.htm

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/black-hole-organizer/

Steve wrote:

The publisher of Black Hole is Lincoln Beach Software;
http://www.lincolnbeach.com/blackhole.asp

In Bits du Jour it has the following conversation:

Robert Bull: Is this the same product as sold by Lincoln Beach Software?

Chris Starre: Yes, It was originally developed by Lincoln Beach Software. We bought the rights and source code from them. We have been working on it and have released this under our product line. We offer full support on this and all of our products. I personally had been using this software for the last decade or so. When it became available, it was in our best interest to purchase it and bring it back to life and current once again.

I like the 3-pane structure of the program, I wish more information managers adopted this approach. When the number of information items stored grow considerably, the tree in a 2-pane outliner can become cluttered to the extent of uselessness.

Yes, this is one of the grand daddy info managers. In its early days, it was innovative. Now it is pretty unremarkable, but I would think very stable and reliable. It used to have a little gizmo that would float on the screen to which you could drag text and other things to store directly into the database... hence them name "black hole." I didn't see mention of that in the demo video, so I wonder if they've disabled that.

It's nice to see that another developer has adopted it. It would be nice to know how he is planning to improve it.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Yes, this is one of the grand daddy info managers. In its early days, it
was innovative. Now it is pretty unremarkable

Yet even today, there are not so many 3-pane outliners out there: Zoot, Sycon IDEA, Keepnote... any others?

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Zoot, Sycon IDEA, Keepnote... any others?

Plus UltraRecall which can be configured as a 3-pane outliner.

I noticed that, too. It's a shame because I always liked that feature, back in the day. It still would be handy and might make this worth the $5 they're charging at Bits. Now though? Color me unimpressed.

Interesting that this has gone from being the market/feature leader to 'is this thing still around? Why?' Sort of like Wordperfect, isn't it?

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Yet even today, there are not so many 3-pane outliners out there: Zoot,
Sycon IDEA, Keepnote... any others?

I can't come up with any others for Windows off the top of my head. There are some for Mac. DevonThink and MacJournal being two that come to mind right off.

My point about Black Hole wasn't to suggest that it isn't a good product. Just that it hasn't advanced much in ten years. For example, I don't think you can store anything but plain and rich text documents in it. No PDFs for example (I could be wrong, but this doesn't appear to be mentioned on the web site). There's nothing wrong with this. In fact, I could make the case that it is a good thing. Probably makes the code simpler, and the product more reliable, as long as you don't need to store other types of documents.

Steve Z.

Yup, I finally got the chance to get over to Bitsdujour today. What I think is exciting is someone purchased it that has used the program for years. They have a vested interest in it besides the money.

Now, as for future development and plans thereof I would not expect any "cutting edge" or syncing to multiple formats. This developer is focused on business products in a more focused way than even Lincoln Beach was/is. Business users (like myself, kind of) are most interested in the basics covered very well. We want solid support and programs that just..... work.

Steve

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Steve wrote:
>The publisher of Black Hole is Lincoln Beach Software;
>http://www.lincolnbeach.com/blackhole.asp

In Bits du Jour it has the following conversation:

Robert Bull: Is this the same product as sold by Lincoln Beach Software?

Chris Starre: Yes, It was originally developed by Lincoln Beach
Software. We bought the rights and source code from them. We have been
working on it and have released this under our product line. We offer
full support on this and all of our products. I personally had been
using this software for the last decade or so. When it became available,
it was in our best interest to purchase it and bring it back to life and
current once again.

I understand what Stephen Z. means by saying that the program hasn't advanced much in 10 years: there is no way to import or export items (aside copy/paste), no tags, categories are exclusive (i.e. no 'clones' or other ways to store an item in multiple category folders), the toolbars have fixed positions...

The program can still run in "floating" mode, i.e. as a minimised icon which you can place anywhere on your screen; I assume this is what you referred to earlier. Right clicking on the icon allows you to create a "document" (note) from the clipboard. You can do the same from BHO's system tray icon, so I don't see the convenience of the floating one --possibly in the past there was no tray icon. Other options when right clicking are to maximise the program, plus "email list" and "URL list", which I assume can be used as a quick address book and favourites list respectively.

It seems to me that the main benefit of BHO's current incarnation is to existing users. If one started using the program in the 90s they will surely have gathered a lot of info during these years. Within this context there are really not many info managers that have been around so long, and Starre software's initiative to take over the code is commendable.

The new owner/developer noted that for purchasers of today's offer the upgrade to v4 will be free, implying that this will take place in less than a year. This sounds like a good incentive for whomever is interested in the program.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote (IN 2012!!!):

"The new owner/developer noted that for purchasers of today's offer the upgrade to v4 will be free, implying that this will take place in less than a year."

Well, it wasn't less than a year, it actually took *five* years, but the update has arrived from the developer. It's at BDJ for $12.47. (April 28, 2017)

Good catch. Thanks for the heads-up.

_______________
Donovan wrote:

Alexander Deliyannis wrote (IN 2012!!!):
>"The new owner/developer noted that for purchasers of today's offer the
upgrade to v4 will be free, implying that this will take place in less
than a year."

Well, it wasn't less than a year, it actually took *five* years, but the
update has arrived from the developer. It's at BDJ for $12.47. (April
28, 2017)

________________________________

Treepad, Jpad, CherryTree, and an almost unending list of other programs do the same thing; some/most for free.

Treepad is the granddaddy of them all and, IMHO, is still the best. Whatever I need to remember, whatever notes I take, whatever memos, articles, books or (most) anything I write starts (and mostly ends) in Treepad.

I used Treepad early on, and liked it. Unfortunately it didn't allow tagging and seemed to show its age.

Daly