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WhizFolders and Graphical Front Ends
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Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Jul 13, 2006 at 01:57 AM
I am very excited about this:
WhizFolders has just implemented the ability to copy external links to its Tree Topics, AND links to text/paragraphs/section headings whatever ‘inside’ its Topics’ Notes - that can be pasted into many other applications - such that you can then navigate from that app to either a WhizFolders Topic (in the Tree) - or to some text buried deep in any Topic Notes Content (like an anchor)... See here: http://whizfolders.com/blog/index.php/category/news/alpha-version-news/. And by the way, what WhizFolders call an alpha is as good as or better than what many other vendors release as advanced betas.
So I am now using Axon Idea Processor (could have been any other concept or mind mapping tool, but I really love the freedom of the ‘many to many’ linking that you just don’t get with Mind Mapping tools which essentially just give a different view of a hierarchy) to create a Visual Navigation system around all my stuff, and especially my extensive notes in WhizFolders (and maybe in due course UltrRecall, if I can get the “Copy Item Command Line” to work in UR which I can’t right now)....
This combination of best of breed Notes Management, and Visual Diagramming/Linking that’s available now with WhizFolders (and perhaps UltraRecall), with Axon Idea Processor is precisely what I have been looking for for ages….
Thoughts?
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jul 14, 2006 at 03:28 AM
Ian, I read your note about WhizFolders with interest.
I have always thought that other programs could do most of what WF does, as well as some other things, such as provide clones, metadata, etc.
But from your post it appears as though you use WF for a lot of your notes.
I know that, like me, you try all kinds of software related to information processing bcause I see your name on many of the same forums I am on.
Bit it also seems from reading your posts that you are also using a number of the different programs.
So I am curious—what kind of information are you making notes about and processing, and how do you decide which program to put which notes into? Is it not a drag having information split among several programs? I know I am continually trying to get my usage down to one or two programs, and as my posts elsewhere in the last week or so indicate, I am pretty much choosing on MDE InfoHandler.
While there are things I like with other programs, such as the aesthetics and the idea of a nice neat outline, I am beginning to realize that when it comes to slicing and dicing information, and being able to get at it real fast, that IS is—for me—the best of the bunch.
Having said that, I have been testing both MyInfo and EverNote.
There’s no doubt that MyInfo has become one nice program, and—IMHO—a better choice than Whize Folders if one wants the outline metaphor. MI offers clones, tags (keywords), and metadata columns, as well as capture of web pages.
EverNote’s metaphor of the endless paper roll or tape is also appealing, and I especially like how the automatic categorizing works. However, it messes up a lot of the web pages it captures (especially The New York Times, which is a main information source for me). I thought it might be good to use it as a one place for all my data. Then with sober second though I realized that though I like the nifty auto cat feature, manual cats in IH can run circles around EN. And in version 10, Manfred has made it so much easier to add categories by way of the category tree.
The cat tree means you no longer have to use the bottom third or so of the page with the category groups, so you have more room for the actual documents. The cat tree is a left sidebar, and is easy to use.
IH has an autocat feature, but it seems to be not as automatic as EverNote’s. However, that’s a minor detail given how much more IH will do.
So, except for CRIMP motivated testing, I think my information is moving away from the outline to a system based on the infinite possibilities of groups of categories. The question of cloning doesn’t even come up because there are no folders. The categories are essentially tags.
I am interested in and do like ADM and Ariadne, and hope both succeed. But I have realized it does not make sense to spread data across different programs, and that I have spent way too many hours trying to make that work, and then wondering why I cannot find things easily.
Daly
Ian Goldsmid wrote:
>I am very excited about this:
>
>WhizFolders has just implemented the ability to copy
>external links to its Tree Topics, AND links to text/paragraphs/section headings
>whatever ‘inside’ its Topics’ Notes - that can be pasted into many other applications
>- such that you can then navigate from that app to either a WhizFolders Topic (in the
>Tree) - or to some text buried deep in any Topic Notes Content (like an anchor)... See
>here:
>http://whizfolders.com/blog/index.php/category/news/alpha-version-news/.
>And by the way, what WhizFolders call an alpha is as good as or better than what many
>other vendors release as advanced betas.
>
>So I am now using Axon Idea Processor
>(could have been any other concept or mind mapping tool, but I really love the freedom
>of the ‘many to many’ linking that you just don’t get with Mind Mapping tools which
>essentially just give a different view of a hierarchy) to create a Visual Navigation
>system around all my stuff, and especially my extensive notes in WhizFolders (and
>maybe in due course UltrRecall, if I can get the “Copy Item Command Line” to work in UR
>which I can’t right now)....
>
>This combination of best of breed Notes Management,
>and Visual Diagramming/Linking that’s available now with WhizFolders (and perhaps
>UltraRecall), with Axon Idea Processor is precisely what I have been looking for for
>ages….
>
>Thoughts?
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Jul 14, 2006 at 05:52 AM
Daly
I have been using UltraRecall mostly… as i have been saving hundreds of web pages - and UR, I have found through extensive trial and error, is absolutely the best for this (even better than ContentSaver - much better actually). I don’t like the fact though that UR only indexes keywords - so this is quite a big limitation (no practical phrase searching for example) - and it also doesn’t highlight search terms - so you search once to find the Item, then again in each item to find the text.
In the last few days, as a result of my suggestions (that I got insight into from playing with OneNote 2007), Sanjay, the developer of WhizFolders has implemented external links from WF as URL’s - so that you can now effectively use WhizFolders as the Notes management application from other programs - as I said in my last note. This is a revelation actually, I find this to be truly productive and creative.
I have always wanted to use a graphical, visual application to manage my information - but all of them, even Mind Manager 6 Pro, are completely NOT built to work with extensive collections of notes (and don’t deal with web pages at all), especially where there will be many and complex cross references - and you want to perform fast, complex text searches too. So a combination of Axon Idea Processor (extremely versatile visual/graphical concept mapping program), and Whizfolders I am finding to be ideal (for now). And then I think UltraRecall will soon make it possible to copy external links into their info Items that can then be pasted into Axon (or any other tool like it) - at the moment UR has a function called “Copy Command Line to Item” - but it doesn’t work right yet when pasted into other apps (as file or web hyperlinks) - but I am certain it will soon - I am in conversation with Kevin about this right now, and I believe he is working on it.
Whizfolders is actually really superb, handles rich text exceedingly well, tables and so forth, has a very poweful full text search, and implements hyperlinking better than any other application out there. The overall feel, responsiveness and pleasureableness of using it is also very high/good.
The key for me is to have a structurally unlimited visual/graphical view of my data, i.e. not just hierarchical (like a mind map is limited to) - it has to be able to represent many-to-many - and much more than that. So with Axon, I can create a superb structurally unlimited graphical front end to all my notes and web pages - and still retain the power of WhizFolders for cross referencing and searching - and UR to retain pristine copies of any web page I throw at it.
I agree with you about InfoHandler, it is truly a superb product, there is nohing like it for rapidly categorizing your info items with potentially complex combinations of categories/sub categories, and for finding/filtering info, potentially where you will want to use complex category intersection - and do that easily and quickly - fabulous! It also makes it possible to link all you other stuff (disk files, web links, Outlook emails/contacts etc) into it, and categorize those links too - marvellous! I nearly went for it ‘lock stock and barrel’ - but the search mechansim in it is rather weak (unless you wanna use Regular Expressions and I don’t, they drive me crazy) - and so is internal linking… and I figured there was something about that that would start to annoy me when I got a lot of data in it…. But it was close…
Another great thing about UR is its ability to easily and quickly export info item content, especially web pages and rich text items… I thereby overcome the UR search limitation by keeping a copy of all my saved web pages, pdf’s, word, ppts etc on disk - and then I have a saved search in X1 that limits the initial search to a set of folders with UR exported data. X1 makes it real easy to perform complex/boolean whatever searches, highlighting all the results, and letting you preview pretty much anything you throw at it…..
In conclusion, even though I am putting most everything in UR, WZ, Axon, I am still waiting with baited breath for two new PIM type applications to emerge into beta - Personal Brain (V4 completely re-written and updated), and Tinderbox. Personal Brain should be available in its new incarnation within a few months, and Eastgate’s Tinderbox for Windows sooner than that.
Well, knowledge management is where much of the issue and opportunity is now and into the future. So I think we are all justified in putting a lot of effort and time into finding the best tools to manage all our stuff. And frankly new ones are always emerging, existing ones compete with each other, coming up with important new features, like external linking, that I find just too compelling to gloss over. So I also look for tools that make it easy to export all the content, and then at least the pain of changing is reduced - albeit you can’t generally automate the export/import of the metadata like the categories in IH… oh well…
Thoughts?
Cheers,
Ian
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 14, 2006 at 02:17 PM
As an information manager, I think Whizfolders isn’t all that strong… although its new, more powerful hyperlinks might help. But I do think Whizfolders is a contender as a writing tool, because of all the tree-based PIMs, its editor seems to me the strongest. It has almost all the features of a genuine word processor.
To me, the greatest weakness of most PIMs is the editor. They are okay for clipping information into, and for quickly jotting notes, but they tend to get in the way of actually composing writing. Whizfolders is an exception, one of the few.
So, for more, how Whizfolders can fit into my workflow is being the repository for the longer documents I need to compose, but it wouldn’t be the application I use to gather and organize notes.
Steve Z
Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 14, 2006 at 03:32 PM
Ian -
> have been using UltraRecall mostly… as i have been saving hundreds of web pages - and UR, I have found through extensive trial and error, is absolutely the best for this (even better than ContentSaver - much better actually). I don’t like the fact though that UR only indexes keywords - so this is quite a big limitation (no practical phrase searching for example) - and it also doesn’t highlight search terms - so you search once to find the Item, then again in each item to find the text.
_____________________________________
I was very interested in your comments about Contentsaver (now re-named Web Research [WR]), since I am seriously thinking about switching back from it to Net Snippets Standard. Given that Ultra Recall has many of WR’s limitations, why do you think it is so much better?
Incidentally, my reasons for returning to NS are:
- doesn’t contain data within a proprietory database
- easy to index and search - especially pdf files - without having to export them first, using external program (e.g., dtSearch - my favourite)
- offers a rudimentary bibliographic feature
- many ways of saving web-pages, extracts, files, links, etc.
- works well with Firefox
- can make separate notes (stored as htm files) with html editor
- provides for comments and other metadata
- offers keywords (but not virtual folders - so can’t “permanently” organize files on basis of keywords; only gather temporarily when doing a keyword search)
- can easily send file as attachment by email (neat)
- can keep on adding clips to existing snippet
- can “hoist” working folder by zooming in, and de-hoist by zooming out.
Many of the above are also offered by programs like Surfulater and WR, of course. And I like the visual elegance of WR’s three-pane display, and its categories; but getting at its data from third-party programs is just too complicated.
As NS uses the Windows filing system to store files, not only is indexed searching easy, but there is no need to tag files with special URL-type addresses in order to hyperlink them to the outside world. It’s easy, for example, for Zoot to make file-links to them.
Down the line there is promise that these problems of proprietory databases will be solved by Windows desktop search, xml, or whatever. At the moment, though, I am leaning back) towards NS again as the only viable current solution to integrating scattered data. Firefox’s Scrapbook is another potential candidate, too, as it doesn’t use a proprietory database either.
Derek