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Best personal information, knowledge and idea manager software?
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Posted by notbalok
Dec 1, 2013 at 01:35 AM
In your opinion, what is the best application running on PC (mobile and cloud are only options, not essential) and compatible with internet browsers (it can capture web contents) that covers above task?
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 6, 2013 at 11:03 PM
Notbalok, welcome to the forum.
In my opinion your question is a bit too general and can be answered only subjectively. First of all, one has to differentiate between information _collection_ (e.g. from a browser) and idea/knowledge _generation_ and organisation; the two require very different features. I personally don’t think that there’s any software that excels in both.
Some thoughts:
- Many information managers provide plug-ins for popular browsers, facilitating information collection: Evernote, MyBase, MyInfo, Surfulater, UltraRecall to name but a few. Even some more ‘idea-oriented’ programs like MindManager provide such a feature. The results of plug-ins vary widely, so depending on whether the faithful copying of web pages is important for you or not, your choice may vary. I am personally mostly interested in the textual content, which most tools have no trouble capturing.
- ‘Knowledge’ managers differ greatly on the underlying ‘model’ of knowledge organisation: outlines / mindmaps, networks, hypertext (wikis), tables… The choice usually reflects the user’s own perception of reality.
- Sometimes, simpler is better: quick capture and access to information, or seamless noting down of ideas may be more important than extensive organisation with keywords, folders etc. It is for me, so I’ve chosen accordingly, i.e. Evernote for the former and Brainsorm for the latter, though there’s a lot of features I miss in both.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 7, 2013 at 12:35 PM
Greetings and welcome to the forum.
I concur with everything Alexander said. “Best” is what works best for you and will probably change over time. The knowledge management tool I currently use the most is TheBrain, which is extremely versatile and useful, but a long way from perfect. Not to mention, it is pricey compared with some of the other options.
Here’s what I like about it:
- The interface just works for me. I like the visual set up of the main window (known as the Plex), which is kind of like a mindmap, but not really. Unlike a mindmap, when you click on an item (known as a thought), it becomes the center of your knowledge universe. You can see related thoughts, and how they may be related. You can stuff a thought full of information:
- text notes
- multiple attachments (almost any kind of file, from PDFs to Word documents)
- multiple links to URLs
- screen shot or icon
- visual links to other thoughts, and the links can have labels to define the relationship
- multiple tags
- provide it with a thought type
- While you can be buried deep into the structure of your data, other key pieces are quickly accessible in a number of ways:
- You can pin thoughts to the top of the Plex for quick access
- You can search for a thought quickly and easily
- If you have tagged a thought, you can quickly find all the thoughts with that tag
- TheBrain has a powerful reporting function to locate thoughts in any number ways
- Integration with data from the outside world is pretty good, could be better. You can drag and drop lots of different pieces of data right into the Plex, either to create a thought related to the active thought, or to make it attached to the active thought:
- Drag e-mail from Outlook
- Drag URLS from your browser
- Drag in files
- Files can be embedded in TheBrain or just linked to
- While you can capture text from the Internet (only be cut and paste), it does not capture the actual web page, but only links to it.
- TheBrain syncs to WebBrain, a proprietary cloud service, which also does a fine job of keeping your data synchronized across your computers. Unfortunately, the handy calendar system is not available online at this time.
Anyway, my point is not to convince you that TheBrain is for you, but just to let you know how it works for me.
Steve Z.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 7, 2013 at 03:20 PM
notbalok wrote:
In your opinion, what is the best application running on PC (mobile and
>cloud are only options, not essential) and compatible with internet
>browsers (it can capture web contents) that covers above task?
I’d also suggest to specify your requirements more precisely. You’ll be more likely to get suitable advice. E.g. what do you mean by “best,” “personal information,” and “knowledge and idea management?” These can mean very different things to different people.
There is also an underlying assumption that it’s best to have a single application to do all this in. But it’s also possible to have several specialist application for the different tasks, and then have those applications “talk” to each other via linking, import/export, or AutoHotkey commands.
To use my current setup as an example, when I need to capture a full webpage (images + text), I use Surfulater, which allows me to link to each capture from other applications. If I only want to capture text, I can use an AutoHotkey script to paste it directly into ConnectedText (my main knowledge management application), but CT also has its own “Clipboard catcher” tool.
When it comes to outlining and writing (as the knowledge production stage), I might use a whole raft of outlining and writing tools for different types of writing. (But then I’m an obsessive-compulsive software collector, so I would say that, wouldn’t I? :)
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 7, 2013 at 05:20 PM
@Steve and Dr. Andus.
Is it possible to drag&drop Evernote notes into TheBrain or ConnectedText. Or - instead of notes - links to Evernote notes?
Thanks, Franz