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Best software for emergent order
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Posted by Randall Shinn
Oct 5, 2007 at 09:25 PM
I own Ultra Recall, Zoot, WhizFolders, and MyInfo, and I have found them all useful for different kinds of tasks, depending on what kind of information structure I need. (I have yet to try OneNote.)
Right now I am trying to decide which program is most useful for collecting information on a kind of random basis (notes, web clippings, thoughts, ideas, etc.) and then giving it some kind of order later on as the collection of information grows larger. This tends to be information that I might use for creative writing such as materials and ideas for projects. (I’m not talking about day-to-day working information or record-keeping.)
So far I find Zoot the easiest program to throw information into without much idea of what I’ll do with it, and then days, weeks, or months later do some sorting out. Essentially I’m concerned with developing an emergent structure from information from the bottom-up. Trying to create much of a top-down structure early in the process would be too restrictive for my purposes.
I’m curious what program others have found most useful for this sort of task.
Randall Shinn
Posted by Chris Thompson
Oct 5, 2007 at 11:48 PM
In my experience, Ecco is best for that kind of thing, for two reasons.
First, it’s a competent single pane outliner, which is often a pretty natural way of rearranging data. Its outliner also supports columns, which is handy when you want to add metadata or ancillary information.
Second, it allows you to create multiple, arbitrary views on your data (it calls these views “notepads”) at any time. Not only that, but then you can filter those views, and turn filters on and off with a single mouse click.
Mix all that together, add in the special views, Gantt charts, and basic math on columns, and it’s a great way to slice and dice information.
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Oct 6, 2007 at 05:40 AM
This process is nothing other than brainstorming, broadly construed and extended in time—the core function of a true outliner. To me, asking for the best program for your purpose tantamount to asking for the most powerful outliner.
I think it’s BrainStorm. (And for those who conclude that the Mac has more advanced outlining than Windows, I would challenge someone to supply a Mac outliner more powerful than BrainStorm. Off course, we may disagree on identifying the core outliner functions.)
Randall Shinn wrote:
>I own Ultra Recall, Zoot, WhizFolders, and MyInfo, and I have found them all useful for
>different kinds of tasks, depending on what kind of information structure I need. (I
>have yet to try OneNote.)
>
>Right now I am trying to decide which program is most useful
>for collecting information on a kind of random basis (notes, web clippings,
>thoughts, ideas, etc.) and then giving it some kind of order later on as the collection
>of information grows larger. This tends to be information that I might use for
>creative writing such as materials and ideas for projects. (I’m not talking about
>day-to-day working information or record-keeping.)
>
>So far I find Zoot the easiest
>program to throw information into without much idea of what I’ll do with it, and then
>days, weeks, or months later do some sorting out. Essentially I’m concerned with
>developing an emergent structure from information from the bottom-up. Trying to
>create much of a top-down structure early in the process would be too restrictive for
>my purposes.
>
>I’m curious what program others have found most useful for this sort of
>task.
>
>Randall Shinn
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 6, 2007 at 11:29 AM
This is exactly where Zoot excels. While I agree with Stephen that Brainstorm is unsurpassed in many of its overall functioning as a brain storming application and for organizing thoughts, to me Zoot has it beat for the purpose of collecting random information and making sense of it later because Zoot allows meta-data and has powerful filtering through smart folders.
The good news is that Zoot and Brainstorm are very compatible products, since both use plain text and both have easy processes for importing and exporting material. I’d collect and organize the information in Zoot, then export it—using Brainstorm’s magic paste function—to Brainstorm to mold it into a coherent narrative.
Steve Z.
Posted by Manfred
Oct 6, 2007 at 01:20 PM
To be sure, Brainstorm is a great program. It also has some similarities with outliners.
But is it an outliner? I don’t think so. From their own Website: “Unlike outliners, there is no concept of headings and notes, all entries (apart from the overall Title) are equal. This makes grabbing information from external sources a breeze. BrainStorm provides a variety of methods, but the best is probably Magic paste.” etc., etc.
At best, it’s “a different kind of outliner.” To say that it defines the core functions of an outliner is therefore a bit misleading.
Manfred