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Organizing vs. searching
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Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 2, 2006 at 10:41 PM
Jan,
Thanks for the ideas. I was pretty excited about ADM at first, mainly because it functions as a both a real outliner (paragraph text within the topic) as well as a database at the same time. However, I’m one of those who has soured on it a bit because of bugginess, data loss problems, etc. I haven’t tried the latest couple of releases, though. I’ve also tried Ariadne in the past, and like almost everything else, it has some appeal to me.
I think the app that I like the best for just shoveling random info in and then making sense of it later is Zoot. But I guess I’m ready for it to modernize a bit, even though it is very powerful as is.
But I think I’m beginning to see that the mechanics and details of anything are probably not going to totally satisfy me any time soon, so I’m looking for conceptual ways to segment different types of information into the apps that suit them (random piles over here, outlines over here, grids over here, maps/visualization over here). The trick here is that it’s actually pretty hard to make things separate.
Chris
Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 2, 2006 at 10:44 PM
dg wrote:
>I’m toying with the idea of going to a chronological filing method with tags
>(meta-data). That is, filing by date and adding tags (meta-data) to aid
>sorting/searching. Has anyone else tried this?
>
>Sorting through the
>results of all these searches showed a new theme…and that was that I often could
>remember the period of time when the item was filed. Hence my idea that I would give up on
>the everything-in-one-folder-with-tags approach and go back to filing, but by
>chronological folders.
Interesting idea, and I think the intersection of chronology and category/type/tags would provide a pretty robust retrieval mechanism. Question is, how do you plan on “tagging” your files? Just in the file name?
Chris
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Sep 2, 2006 at 11:56 PM
Jan, I’m going to post something on Ariadne later tonight or tomorrow morning.
I am putting together a grant proposal for a pilot program to treat people with borderline personality d/o using a new therapy approach. What I have done is develop a writing template using Ariadne, and taking advantage of its comments, notes, particles, and colour highlighting of outline items.
It’s low tech—but appropriate tech, if you know what I mean.
More later.
Daly
Jan Rifkinson wrote:
>Chris, I find it impossible to structure/organixze my thoughts, interests,
>projects, blah_blah. If I tried it, I’d be spending time doing that rather than
>following my intersts or accomplishing anything so I’ve always searched for
>programs that could absorb random info & then organize it for me.
>
>To that end, I
>started with Lotus Agenda, then switched to EccoPro (when, sadly, Agenda was
>abandoned)
>Then I revisited Zoot (direct descendant of Agenda) but it’s in the
>process of being coded for 32bit
>
>For the past few years I’ve been using Ariadne & ADM.
>(basically). I just dump everything into ADM & use it to gather data when I need it. It
>makes me feel warm all over when I see the results. Both these programs are a little
>quirky but affordable & in continuing development… albeit not always as quickly as
>one might like.
>
>Daly & a few others can talk about both these programs as well. I’m not
>touting either. I’m just telling you what I use for the exact same reasons you’re
>concerned with.
>
>—
>Jan Rifkinson
>Ridgefield, CT USA
>skype janrif
>
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Sep 3, 2006 at 12:20 AM
Chris:
Re “The only problem with just using files and not software like UR is that there is no consistent way (that I know of) to tag or set user-defined attributes on files (with text files, I can just put the metadata in the file, but there are other file types where this wouldn’t work).”
Have you seen “My SmartFolders” - http://www.castlepeaksoftware.com/Products.html ?
Regards,
Ian Goldsmid
Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 3, 2006 at 02:23 AM
Ian, thanks for the tip. That looks interesting indeed. I will try it out.
Chris