Here's the setup that I've spent a number of months refining.

Home and office (Windows desktops):

- Emacs with the following modes/packages:
-- org-mode for project and todo management
-- Deft for nvAlt-style plaintext file browsing.
-- helm/helm-swoop for searching within the body of files
-- markdown-mode for writing & copyediting

Mobile (iPhone 5):

- Editorial for browsing and editing .org and .md files

All these files are kept in Dropbox. Rather than one giant org-mode outline file, I maintain lots of individual .org files, one for each project or list. This is because navigating a long text file on iOS is impractical and frustrating. All the .org files are automatically added to the agenda. This allows me to get a complete todo list for absolutely everything using the org-agenda function.

I am really liking org's ability to extract these TODO entries from many files and aggregate them. It lets me keep projects compartmentalized in their own files, but doesn't prevent me from getting the 20,000 foot view when I need it.

Wow, that is so hard-core minimalist. The total opposite of CRIMPing. I'm seriously impressed!

Looking forward to TheBrain 9 and Scrivener for iPad in 2016.

Steve Z.

Let's not forget: Scrivener and Ulysses for iPad and iPhone in 2016 (Keith's already published photos of Scrivener running on his iPhone - years ago, in fact).

My setup in 2015

* E-Mail: Outlook on Windows and Mac, iOS Mail
* Calendar: Outlook, iOS Calender plus Week Cal
* ToDo: LibreOffice Calc
* Writing: LibreOffice Writer, Microsoft Word 2016, Ulysses on Mac and iOS
* Text expansion: PhraseExpress (Win), TextExpander (Mac, iOS)
* Proofreeading: Papyrus (Win/Mac) for German and Grammarly (web service) for English
* Clustering, brainstorming, outlining: Scapple, Xmind, Scrivener (less and less), Word 2013/2016, LibreOffice Calc
* Publishing: Jutoh for e-books, LibreOffice PDF export, Wordpress
* Notes: Evernote (Win/Mac/iOS), NoteCase Pro (Win/Mac), OneNote (Windows only), Ulysses

Plans for 2016
* Getting rid of Evernote.
Reasons: Organizing several notebooks in EN is cumbersome - I prefer using folders over tags, and while you can create folders using them is ... Moreover, for a while EN did hang on my Macbook Pro - uninstalling or upgrading did not help; in the meantime, EN works again. Same thing on my iPad 2, these problems are gone now, too. Nevertheless, my trust in EN is going down.

Alternatives I will test over the next weeks:
- NoteCasePro: biggest advantage is the support for Windows and Mac OS X
I just moved part of my stuff over to NoteCase Pro and try to see how I get along. Importing worked in an older version of NC but not in the current NC 4.1.1. Miroslav has been very responsive, he sent me a couple of updates over New Year trying to fix the import bug; so far it hasn't been resolved.
- DevonThink
- Curio

* Trying new tools
Zengobi Curio
Workflowy

* Crossover for Mac OS X
for running Office 2013 and 2016 for Win on my Mac Mini (still hoping to get rid of my Windows PCs)

Hi all,

here's what my outlining/Crimping setup looked like in 2015 (and still looks like)

Mac:
- OutlineEdit
- Letterspace
- (occasionally: iA writer, Outlinely)

iOS:
- Letterspace
- Vesper
- Notes.app (built-in, after iOS 9 update)
- LiquidText for extracting PDF highlights, which I later open in Word on my Mac

Web:
- Trello

Heya!

Made real progress late 2015:

primarily using now:
Devonthink: working with indexed data mostly, and its's scansnap ability. Do most of my writing here too!
Marginnote on mac and iOS for data extraction
Useclark on mac and iOS for comprehension
fileloupe on mac for finding poorly stored relics of history..
wagbee for web based data extraction and logging.

starting to keep records of all work with smartsheet webapp too. but looking for options with this one. (fasttrack 10 schedule works nicely in this space, but has zero webability!)

finally dropped TheBrain8 - company too annoying and the scope of any moments work is too myopic for me.
dropped omnioutliner for smartsheet.

looking forward to where notion.so goes this year!

There is something very beguiling about Trello. I've just discovered a rather neat Mac OS X app that makes it even more beguiling: Lists.

It's not perfect, but it's a very pleasant, lightweight complement to the full Trello experience.

zoe wrote:

I am really liking org’s ability to extract these TODO entries from many files and
aggregate them.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Wow, that is so hard-core minimalist.
I'm seriously impressed!

I concur, very impressive indeed!

Zoe, one thing that's not clear to me, how do you access your todos on your iPhone though? Does Editorial allow you to aggregate and extract them as well?

Windows (XP)
Capture Web and Snippets:

- Wiznote kept and saved offline in a USB Wifi Flash drive (personal cloud in the pocket), indexed with Archivarius or Dtsearch (Wiznote files are zip files);
- Text fragment files created using AutoHotKey, that I feel to re-use as Sublimetext Snippets;
- Web pages saved in few folders as mht files (from IE, Opera, or Firefox with a plugin) and indexed with Archivarius or Dtsearch.

Outliner Writing:

- Framemaker 6 or 7 with plugins of Outliner and Autotext;
- Sublimetext with plugins for root file management and latex/markdown editing.

Organizer and management of PDFs:

- Files left in Windows Explorer with tagging metadata and file organization, by using:
- Bridge;
- Directory Opus.

Still keeping an eye in 2016:
- Ultrarecall, Rightnote, Connectedtext, TheBrain, Mybase, Myinfo among others.

Waiting and Hoping, but not holding my breath:
- Writing outliner for MS Word without both long document slowness and property file system;
- Scrivener that writes and prints equations properly and with a better pdf reader;
- Sublimetext with a full outliner plugin.

Zoe, one thing that's not clear to me, how do you access your todos on
your iPhone though? Does Editorial allow you to aggregate and extract
them as well?

I was wondering the same thing. From what I know of Editorial, it looks like all the pieces are there to process .Org files, but I can't find any information on actually doing it. Closest I've found are a few posts on the support forum asking for Org-Mode support.

Bill, could you post a link to the source for the "Lists" app -- it's kind a generic search in Google and I haven't honed in on it.



MadaboutDana wrote:

There is something very beguiling about Trello. I've just discovered a
rather neat Mac OS X app that makes it even more beguiling: Lists.

It's not perfect, but it's a very pleasant, lightweight complement to
the full Trello experience.

Not too many changes in 2015. Going into '16, here's what I'm working with:

Windows 7

RightNote - New for me in 2015. Love the web publishing option - it actually works in a very useful way and searches beautifully.
Notebooks by Alfons Schmid - Like it a lot for longer essay collections, etc. I wish it was quicker, as in snappier.
The Journal 7 - Personal journaling and frankly, this software could easily replace most tree-based outliners.
This works for me as I'm very text-oriented. That's why I recently mentioned another piece of Windows software I have used since 1996 - the unknown but incredible EasyDesktop. It's a whole different way to use Windows. Still actively developed.
http://www.microseconds.com/easydesktop-90.html

Web-based

Inbox by Gmail - For email AND it's my to-do and life manager. Love the pinned reminders and emails. Much better than regular Gmail.
Dropbox Paper - It's perfect for writing and collaboration. I share many notes and the simplicity is wonderful. I was an early-invite to 'Paper' and have been using it for a while now. I use it every day. Check it out and get on the waiting list:
https://www.dropbox.com/paper

iPhone/iPad

.
Drafts - Couldn't function on-the-go without it. My personal favorite iOS app.
Inbox by Gmail and Dropbox as listed above.

Most Important Tool:

The Professional Grade Laboratory Notebook by BookFactory - Yes, a hardbound 8x10 old-fashioned paper notebook.
Here's the one I use (no referral code don't worry):
http://www.amazon.com/BookFactory-Lab-Notebook-Laboratory-LRU-168-SRS-A-LKMST1/dp/B0062OGKT8
It's just wonderful to use. 162 pages complete with six pages of 162 blank table of contents at the front. Lays flat with no issues. I use this more than anything and going "back to paper" real-time actually keeps me on track and is quicker (for me) than the software that I use. I'm very text oriented. I occasionally scan my notebooks and have a relatively recent "backup" all the time. It just works. And the battery life? Oh, wait...

Yo Paul - you'll find it in the Mac App Store. Actually, more recently, I've started using App for Trello. It's simply an encapsulated Safari/Webkit page holder, but it lurks in the menu bar and gives me instant access to Trello whichever screen I'm in. Oh, and it's very cheap. Also on the Mac App Store.

Paul Korm wrote:

Bill, could you post a link to the source for the "Lists" app -- it's
kind a generic search in Google and I haven't honed in on it.

Pretty sure he means this-
http://lists4trello.com

Paul Korm wrote:

Bill, could you post a link to the source for the "Lists" app -- it's
kind a generic search in Google and I haven't honed in on it.



MadaboutDana wrote:
There is something very beguiling about Trello. I've just discovered a
>rather neat Mac OS X app that makes it even more beguiling: Lists.
>
>It's not perfect, but it's a very pleasant, lightweight complement to
>the full Trello experience.

Graham Rhind wrote:

The whole idea of, for example, creating tags for every
day so that it can be used as a diary - madness.

While I don't use WorkFlowy for a manual diary, there can be a method to madness.

There are situations when it can make sense to create a manual calendar, in order to pay closer attention to the allocation of tasks to time within a day or a week.

Sometimes it's all too easy to drop tons of stuff into a Google Calendar day, without there being a realistic chance of accomplishing them.

For such manual calendaring I sometimes use Gingko, as a card metaphor is helpful to visualise a time period, such as a day or an hour. Sometimes I also use Classic Calendar for it, when working offline.

First time post here...

I'm a Mac user

Note taking for writing projects: Tinderbox (love it but know I'm not using it to its full potential)
Note taking for work related info, committees, etc: Workflowy
Note taking for patients (I'm a speech-language pathologist/academic): Curio since it allows me to embed audio and video files, the very flexible scrapbook approach just makes sense for covering diagnostic thinking, treatment planning, and data collection
Note taking that is very temporary: Noteaway - it sits in my menubar, has decent formatting ability, and will remain visible when other windows are active
Reference manager: Sente
Document searching: Foxtrot Pro - I love the ability to search my entire Sente database (~5000 journal articles) for the occurrence of 2 or more neighboring words
Writing: back and forth between Ulysses and Scrivener, Microsoft Word
Todos: Omnifocus

For 2016
Will probably explore other writing apps, something particularly useful for academic writing and collaboration. Neither Ulysses or Scrivener have really clicked with me. I might try Manuscripts, Authorea, Penflip, or Drafts (Draftin.com) or just dedicate more time to understanding Ulysses or Scrivener...

Windows 10 desktop user and Windows 10 Surface tablet and Android phone user.

My setup for productivity is like this:

Task Management: Teamwork
Notes/Knowledge Management: OneNote
Text Expander: Phrase Express
Mind Mapping: Xmind
CRM: Insight.ly

Useful things in 2015:
* Plaintext for any input.
* Sublime (Windows) and Helium (Blackberry) for editing plaintext.
* Same as above for editing/evaluating Python.
* Python for turning plaintext into other things (html, pdf, etc.).
* Brilliant database and Gnuplot for one-off data mining jobs.
* Todolist.exe for project oversight and file bookmarking (sometimes use Brilliant if things need to be automated).

Promising things:
* Emacs + org + SQLite... good idea but laggy & temperamental.
* HLA... will replace python once I understand it better.
* Windows10 Outlook. Severely regressed for a while, but what I'm seeing emerge now is pretty slick... now arguably more capable than mail/calendar on older Nokias.
* Juggernaut. x86 Surface phone with proper convergence... if they don't stuff it up, like blocking multitasking, or blocking win32 programs from running unless the device is docked, or not supporting console/coding keyboard-layouts and macros. Being able to run a win32 executable or script (via runtime) in the background is essential for working with custom tools. They need to sell it as a producer device, not consumer.

Disappointing things:
* OneNote on Windows10 phone. Seems to be missing a lot of formatting options.
* TheBrain 9. Still basic; still only memo & date field per record, no form/table customization, weak filtering, no i/o parsers.
* Blackberry Blend (and Blackberry in general), was so close to being a live-in solution, but they got flighty and went Android. All they needed for Blend was to add the integrated note-taking/task app, the web browser and the BB10 dark-theme.

OK, let's try to do the list:
1. Mediawiki + SemanitcMediawiki - for general knowledge base (based on the zettelkasten rules).
2. OneNote - for quickly collecting quotations, thoughts and so on. To be incorporated into Mediawiki once a week (or more often). And for base for tips and tricks and howtos (strictly technical).
3. Midori notebook (analog!) - the same as OneNote.
3. Workflowy - for outlining big projects.
4. Todoist - for task management and general, quick and dirty inbox.
5. Gmail - for mail :)
6. Sublimetext - editor for almost everything
7. Zotero - ultimate references and pdf collector.
8. Pandoc and markdown with LaTeX elements - for writing papers (in Sublime, of course).
9. QGIS - for mapping (I'm very happy migrating from ArcGIS).
10. Gnuplot - you know, for charts.
11. SQLite and Access for databases.
12. R for statistics.

There are some more, but a dozen to show is enough :)

The tools listed from 1 to 4 are new, I'm started to use them in 2015 or in the end of 2014. But they do it's job very good. And the rest of the list is much more well settled.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Ah. Well.
...The whole idea of, for example, creating tags for every
day so that it can be used as a diary - madness. Like the bullet journal
- great idea in some respects,. but "just write out the dates for every
day in the coming month", And then write them all again because there's
not enough space for the appointments. Then find you need to write an
appointment for seven months ahead and rewrite everything .... what???
Ain't nobody got time for that! I use a diary on paper - can't be
beaten. Hence my "not pushing programs I do use to do things they
can’t do comfortably" comment.

Actually this is relatively easy. I have the complete year in Workflowy and it didn't take more than 10 min to set up. I use a Mac. I open a new Numbers (Mac spreadsheet document), type a date 01/01/2016 customise the format of the cell so it displays "Jan-01-2016-Fri". I then select the cell and use the fill button which I drag down. The fill option copies the cell and moves the date on by one day. I drag down until I hit "Dec-31-2016-Sat". I select all the cells, paste in Workflow and the job is done. If I want to get more fancy I do the same with the names "January" to "December", copy and paste them in to Workflowy and move the relevant days under the months.

Why would I want my diary in Workflowy?

I have set if tags I use for diary entries, #event, #meeting, #birthday, etc. These sit on a line of their own above the months of the year. All I need to remember is that if it's a meeting to add #meeting. This comes fairly easily and the autocomplete helps out. I can go to the top level of my calendar and click on #meeting and all my meetings appear with everything else filtered out. If I want to see all meeting with @Fred-Bloggs I just add that tag and it further filters. This has made Workflowy so useful. I can have a complete project under one bullet, I can have many parts of a project spread out over many meetings and without needing to move them just add the project bullet. When I click the bullet, everything else disappears and the bullet items are in plain view. I can share individual bullets with others if I need. Everything is available on my mac, ipad and iphone. The format is not locked in. An automatic backup gets made to my dropbox account and I can export the whole thing in opml for any outliner.

What's not to love! ;)

Simon wrote:

When I click
the bullet, everything else disappears and the bullet items are in plain
view. I can share individual bullets with others if I need. Everything
is available on my mac, ipad and iphone. The format is not locked in. An
automatic backup gets made to my dropbox account and I can export the
whole thing in opml for any outliner.

What's not to love! ;)

Amen! ;)