Forum Posts Feed
Nimbus Notes
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 > Last ›
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 24, 2014 at 07:12 PM
Hey Neville, I did get a reply to your post y’day and had written my own response when somehow it got deleted. I will try to recreate it later.
I was actually supposed to reply to a much earlier post of yours some months ago, and did not. Please accept my apologies. I have long respected your work, and your responsiveness to users.
Some time ago I posted to you, not sure where, a list of criteria or deal makers for me with regard to the new program I will try to recreate that list from memory now, and later when I get a moment talk about where Clibu is at today.
Ideally, my deal makers for a program are:
*More than 1 open window so I can write in note and read from others - essential when doing serious writing and drawing on stored info (this is an EN feature off-line)
*Works across platform, ie laptop (I’m in Windows world still), my Android tablet, and in a browser
*Must have ability to store data locally or in cloud of my choice as well as in the program’s own cloud - EN data lives on both my laptop and Android as well as in EN loud
*Must have downloadable desktop/laptop version
*Browser version must be as usable as locally based versions (EN used to be but new browser version is like an alien product and clunky t use because it takes up too much space displaying note titles)
*Robust tagging (ideally more so than EN’s)
*Folder plus tag structuring - Clibu to me is a step backward from Surfulater in this regard
*Readily available metadata and ability to add own notes (Surfulater offered both these features and it appears Clibu does or is moving in this direction)
Just in last few days I’ve been again looking at Clibu and will write about that later. I notice it’s log-in is very fussy, and that refreshing the screen or going back from my Clibu data base to a generic Clibu page logs me out - this is frustrating and time wasting, but I assume it’s part of getting everything function and will be enhanced.
One question I come back and may have asked before, Neville, and that is why Surfulater could not have been continued to be supported?
And if it was still being supprted, why it could not have evolved a net or browser version, keeping its existing feature set?
My main concern w Surfulater was the inability to have more than one open window.
A program that did some things elegantly though now in an out of date way, was Ariadne when under the original developer. Unfortunately Ariadne has veered from its strengths. I appreciated I could have open comment and content windows. Comment windows contained usually notes about the content to which a specific comment window was attached.
I agree with Dr Andus that Clibu needs to have a more compact format on screen because it is too wide open and inefficient if you have 100s or 1000s of notes/articles etc. Worst, most extreme example of being too open is Evernote’s current browser version. For me it is completely unworkable in the browser. And the browser version has finally betrayed my trust in management’s ability to maintain a serious information manager. Thus this conversation! :)
So while I may not be an actual end user of Clibu I wish you all success with it.
Absolutely minimum for me would be local storage and working off-line.
Cheers,
Daly
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 24, 2014 at 07:29 PM
In the summer, before I got quite so anxious about Evernote I bought Noteshare Express.
It’s quirky. But it does have the more typical Mac style notebook metaphor, fairly well implemented, and it does create its own index on the fly.
In some ways it may be idea for my trauma project, but I don’t know if how robust it is with 1,000s of articles.
I am concerned because one of the features for which I bought it doesn’t appear to work at all.
And the product hasn’t been developed since 2012.
So dare I trust it in the long haul.
Anyone have thoughts on Noteshare Express or intel about its future trajectory. I love the automatic index at the back.
Also today I was looking at stand-alone Zotero. Any thoughts?
I’m anxious because I’m about to launch what for me is a major project, and with it crowd-sourced funding. Once the funding appeal, new web site etc are begun there is no time to putsky around.
Posted by Neville Franks
Nov 24, 2014 at 08:34 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
Neville Franks wrote:
>>Yes it is entirely Browser or Web app. What are you wanting from a
>>Windows Desktop app that you don’t see us being able to do in a Web
>app?
>
>> 1) Being able to work off-line;
That is planned using the Browser App.
>> 2) having a complete local back-up of the data, in case failure in the cloud;
a) Offline use will do this. b) We will have full export capabilities. c) I’m looking at providing a version you can install on your local pc/server and d) on you own remote server.
>> 3) hopefully faster search, or even extra features not available or possible in a web app.
Search will be faster if you are running Clibu locally, however I can’t say I personally feel it is slow and I’m a very long way away from where the Clibu server is located. Both full text search and tag filtering use database indexes and in themselves are fast, so it should be just network latency and of course size of articles that impact performance.
>> Would you see this “minimalist” view replacing the current ‘Collapsed’ articles view or being separate?
>> The current view is still useful. I was thinking of an additional option.
Thanks. Stay tuned.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 24, 2014 at 09:26 PM
I would definitely steer clear of Aquaminds products for the time being. Too many reviews bitterly lamenting lost data/failed synchronisation. It’s a shame, because the products have potential. But development appears to have stalled, and customer support is, I gather, non-existent.
If you’re using a Mac and really need to be able to handle a lot of data efficiently, then DEVONthink (with its iOS reader) is definitely your friend. The iOS client gets criticism, but if you’re using it to read/check info repositories, I’ve found it perfectly stable; I wouldn’t want to do much actual work in it (apart from reading), but the developer is, apparently, creating a brand-new, completely rewritten app.
On the desktop, DEVONthink is pretty much without peer. Stable, powerful, huge range of organisational options, very fast search engine. I wouldn’t bother with Office unless you happen to need OCR; Pro is the one I’d recommend.
The other advantage of DEVONthink is that it holds files in standard folder structures (managed by database), but can also index external files/folders in other locations. This gives you added flexibility in case you decide to use some kind of tagging engine (e.g. EagleFiler, or a number of different Windows equivalents) to handle your files on other platforms. Finally, DEVONthink can synchronise copies of its databases to online services (I sync my databases to my Soonr account as a matter of course, but could equally well use OneDrive, Dropbox et al.).
There are other options, of course. Wiznote has come on a lot; it’s perhaps the closest thing to Evernote out there (apart from Nimbus Notes). There’s also a rather nice Mac app called Metanota Pro, which can synchronise with EverNote (text only) and SimpleNote. It doesn’t support tags as such, but uses a kind of tag-folder model that’s quite useful.
An app I’ve been looking at with interest for a while is TagSpaces. Again, not sure if this would do the trick, but it’s cross-platform, and appears to be rather powerful (as an organisational tool), but flexible and non-restrictive. It’s also open-source, which is a good thing! More details here: http://www.tagspaces.org
For what you’re contemplating, TagSpaces might actually be your best bet, based as it is on your computer’s existing file/folder structure.
Posted by Neville Franks
Nov 24, 2014 at 09:29 PM
Hi Daly,
Thanks for the reply.
- With Clibu you can have a Knowledge Base open in as many Tabs as you want and I may look at a popup window in the future. You can of course have multiple Browser instances open with Knowledge Bases open in both which gives you separate Windows. And because Clibu updates all Browsers in real time you’ll see all changes as they occur.
- Clibu currently works across Windows, Mac & Linux. Tablet and possibly Smartphone versions are planned.
- Off-line use with data stored locally is planned. Also the ability to install Clibu locally and have your own local cloud is planned as is the ability to install it on a Web Server you own. These options cover all the bases I can think off.
>> *Must have downloadable desktop/laptop version.
Why and what for when we can do everything you want as described above.
>> *Folder plus tag structuring - Clibu to me is a step backward from Surfulater in this regard
The Knowledge Tree in Surfulater was good, but limiting and Tags were an afterthought which sort of worked and were also limited in their use.
Clibu enhances and evolves both of these into one unified Tags Tree. You get the same functionality as the Surfulater Folder tree, but using Tags instead, with the big benefit being that an article can have as many tags as you want, and therefore be in as many tree branches as you want. This is simpler, quicker and better than having to copy articles into multiple folders in Surfulater.
Further the Tags in Clibu are true hierarchical tags, which can be moved in the hierarchy and renamed in an instant. And the Tags filter lets you quickly see just the articles you want.
I’d be interested to know where you see the shortcomings in this?
>> I notice it’s log-in is very fussy,
I had to restart Clibu several times yesterday to fix some issues and install a new version and I think the problems you saw were because of this. Once you are logged into Clibu you should stayed logged in and not have the issues you raised. If this happens again please let me know.
>> One question I come back and may have asked before, Neville, and that is why Surfulater could not have been continued to be supported?
People want access to their content from any PC (or device) anywhere and they want to share content and enable others to collaborate with them. Surfulater is not capable of meeting any of these needs, whereas Clibu is. The days of installing OS specific desktop apps is slowly coming to an end and instead we are moving our lives to the cloud. Five or so years back I would never have said this and it was never something I would have done, but now most of the apps I use day in day out are in the cloud and I love it. I’m free from the shackles of being tied to my Desktop PC and can do stuff from anywhere and love it. Hence Clibu and not Surfulater. In fact I don’t think I’ve used Surfulater on over 2 years now. As soon as I had the basics of Clibu working I’ve never looked back.
Neville