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Wezinc - Mindmap based Information Manager
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Posted by Slartibartfarst
Jun 21, 2015 at 02:33 PM
@jperlman: Thanks for posting about Wezinc - it’s something new to me.
I downloaded and installed it and have left it running all the time it seems to successfully miontor Clipboard activity - an excellent feature).
My notes:
* Test system: is a Toshiba laptop with OS Win8.1-64 PRO.
* Installation: No difficulties experienced in accessing and using the website (http://www.wezinc.com/), nor in downloading the file. Installation was straightforward and apparently harmless (Malwarebytes indicated no CANDYWARE or PUPs). No options for the location of the installation folder though.
* Costs: File is available as “currently FREE”, with an implication that it won’t be free for too long. I wondered why that was.
* Then I figured out why. Wezinc is definitely in Beta state at present - e.g., it is unstable - in the first 30 minutes or so of use, I managed to crash it 5 or 6 times with database errors. Each time it tries to write home with an email report about the crash, with the report containing full details of the specification of the user’s system and a small dump of Wezinc RAM values/settings. It does not recover from a crash, and the Wezinc process has to be expunged and then restarted to ensure a clean start. On restarting, Wezinc so far seems to have lost little - if any- of the user data that was being changed when the crash occurred. Failing “safe” like that is usually a sign of good development practice.
* One vital missing ingredient that immediately struck me was a lack of good ergonomics in the UI. For example, the UI feels decidedly unintuitive - even sometimes kludgy - and perceptually is visually glary as all heck. For the former, I presume the developer needs feeback so that he can get it right, whereas for the latter, there needs to be some form of user adjustment of background colours and text fonts/sizes/colours.
* The UI also seems to be somewhat idiosyncratic, and may reflect that there is only one main developer/designer dogmatically dominating the paradigm and the direction of the design, and also reflecting his/her lack of experience in developing software with an ergonomically usable and intuitive “user-friendly” UI - e.g., similar problem to, for example, Windows Metro/8 OS and the InfoSelect10 PIM. If that is the case with Wezinc, then it may eventually kill the product - as it did for the aforementioned 2 examples.
* Having said the above, Wezinc would seem to have tons of potential. Whilst it’s navigation across the 2 or 3 panes is currently nowhere near as slick ergonomically as (say) InfoSelect8 (including the clever HotSpots feature), for example, and whilst its RTF capability is miles behind (say) MS OneNote 2013, it is moving towards those directions. However a major differentiator is the mindmap functionality, which looks like it might be in an early stage of development, but if it continues then it could match, or even outclass (say) The Brain in that regard.
* Wezink also has hyperlinking (Ctrl-K) to Internet URLs, though it does not seem to have Wiki-like internal hyperlinking - e.g., similar to InfoSelect8 (good) or MS OneNote (very good indeed).
* Having migrated to a new laptop, I am about to install/update WizNote (which some people have described as a potential killer app. amongst PIMs) and will see how Wezinc compares with that. Refer: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=36909.msg345599#msg345599
* A remaining hurdle for PIMs seems to be the ability to capture whole web pages intact - html text and embedded images - as-is, and incorporate that text/images into the KB index/search, and also for Windows Desktop Search - just like any other data. The Firefox extension Scrapbook currently does that, but that is all it does, and it does it very well. WizNote is getting there, and even allows editing of the material in the captured pages.
Posted by bavarian kid
Jun 22, 2015 at 05:06 AM
@Slartibartfarst
If you are looking for Wiki-like internal hyperlinking in an information manager, you may wish to give Mind Collected a look http://www.mindcollected.com/ . I use it as a visual project database on a daily basis. The developer, Jiri Novotny, is very responsive to additional feature requests.
Posted by jperlman
Jun 26, 2015 at 12:52 AM
Hi there, Startibarfarst… Great to hear about your efforts. I had installed Weznic just before the troubles with the site and had installed on Windows Vista.
Sorry I did not write you sooner. Weznic, I too, find it very interesting. It ran the first time I installed it. I wanted to take a look at the videos but I am on a 4g broadband connection with just 3 gb a month for use, so it is out of the question to do any kind of streaming. But when I have a chance, I find and look for interesting software, and I like to post what I find.
And yes, when I found Mind Collected, one night just about to turn in, after searching I came across it, and found it quite interesting. I would like to see how the application develops in the future, but it as it is, is very well designed very featureful. I was looking for a software in that category - I was curious if something like that existed.
Ok, for now, I say thank you for your comment, and it is nice to hear you found something interesting.
...sincerely, jariell
Sincerely
Posted by jperlman
Jun 26, 2015 at 01:00 AM
My mistake for misappropriating name of the Wezinc application, as Weznic. I should have been more careful. I have been away from, a bit.
...Jariell
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Jan 9, 2016 at 02:04 AM
2016-01-09 1424hrs:
Well, I have been steadily trialling Wezinc over several month. It had just one upgrade (I think) and I keep it running all the time. It sits in the Systray, monitoring the Clipboard for Copy actions.
1. Stability: It is VERY stable. One of the most stable apps I have come across. I have been able to cause it to “not respond” or sometimes crash, by going too fast on the editing and giving it too much to do, but that is the exception. Considering it is still under development (I think), then stability like this at this stage of its life-cycle would seem to be quite a remarkable achievement.
2. Clipboard sensing: Works flawlessly in the background and gives a little 3-second (or so) slowly fading pop-up in the lower RH corner of the screen every time the Clipboard is used to make a Copy, so you can send the copied contents to Wezinc if you want.
3. Data capture: Wezinc captures text and images (RTF) and source metadata, and you can edit the captured data using a MS Word-like GUI. It also has an MS Office 2013/6-like ribbon menu.
4. Ergonomics: Still room for improvement and pretty much the same as I mentioned in the above comment posted, but I feel sure that can get fixed in time, or the user (me) learns how to make better/optimal use of the thing. I’m still learning, and the tool itself is fairly complex.
5. Use as a PIM/KM tool: Wezinc gives the user some marvellous ways in which to manipulate and relate data and the properties of the data, and model this in mindmaps. I think it’s a brilliant piece of software development with a lot of potential still to be realised.
6. Summary: Very nice piece of software development and potentially nipping at the heels of OneNote for complex knowledge-building and establishing data relationships. Needs wiki-like hyperlinking, bulk tagging, and auto-tagging (has manual individual record tagging). I haven’t tried out its file-holding capabilities yet, but it looks like it could be very useful in that regard if one has that as a requirement.
I give Wezinc 3 or 4 out of 5 thumbs up and it’s still under development. Well worth some investigation IMHO.
BUT, Wezinc may be shutting down or abandoned?
I wanted to visit the website: http://www.wezinc.com today to read their Help and FAQ, but it was down - says “You have reached a domain that is pending ICANN verification.”.
I sent an email to the info@wezinc.com and support@wezinc.com to tell them about that, but I suspect they are unattended mailboxes. I had written to them some time back with a query but had no response.
You can access their website and download the software via Wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20150623183456/http://www.wezinc.com:80/
Download link is: https://web.archive.org/web/20160109005158/http://wezinc.s3.amazonaws.com/WezincSetup.exe
YouTube Wezinc instructional videos channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNZT0noElTVaIbR56YW8jxg
Happy days.