Looking at the long list of outliners and PIMs recently posted here, I realize how few of them are new or doing anything innovative.

In fact, the whole category of applications seems to be asleep. The most exciting event on the horizon is the promised RTF formatting for Zoot! (I'm exempting SQLNotes here, Pierre, because you're application is still in its pre-release stage.)

Am I missing something? Or have we really seen the end of genuine innovation and advancement in this category?

Please feed my CRIMP habit!

Steve Z.

I think EverNote3 is pretty exciting. There is also some movement on the web-based outliner front. For instance, thinkfold.com is interesting.

dan7000 wrote:

I think EverNote3 is pretty exciting. There is also some movement on the web-based
outliner front. For instance, thinkfold.com is interesting.

Dan,

I'd enjoy reading your comments about why EverNote3 is exciting. Is it the ability to share notes over the Internet with a variety of devices? Or are their other features that intrigue you?

Thanks.

Steve

I'd enjoy reading your comments about why EverNote3 is exciting. Is it the
ability to share notes over the Internet with a variety of devices? Or are their other
features that intrigue you?

Well, to be honest, one exciting thing about it is that it's new. But here are a couple of other things:

1. The most exciting thing for me is the use of tags for organization. I've always been a hierarchical-outliner type of guy, but after using del.ici.ous a lot, I'm starting to think tagging is a smarter way to organize data.
First, items can have more than one tag, vs only one outline parent.
Second, tagging separates the organization of data from its content, vs outlining makes you decide whether the content of one note is a subset of the content of another.
Third, you can tag something without calling up the whole outline -so I can completely file a clipping from the web using a little dialog box just by choosing tags - vs with outliners, you have to send everything to an "inbox" or "unfiled notes" folder and then go through and file them later.

2. Unlike Omea, OneNote and (I think) Ultrarecall, which all support tags too, tags are totally central to EN's organization - the fact that hierarchical folders are not supported forces me to really concentrate on the tagging metaphor.

3. The speed and workflow of clipping is a great usablity experience. As I said above, when I clip from the web or a document, I quickly tag the item in a small dialog box and I never have to re-organize that item again. In contrast, OneNote and other programs force a 2-step process: clip into "unfiled" and then later file it for real.

4. Yes, the ability to share notes over the internet. I use 2 computers regularly and I'm in the market for an iPhone so this is pretty useful.

5. Because the notes are stored on the internet, they are automatically backed up and immediately accessible if my computer explodes. My last machine died in March and I had to figure out how to re-install a licensed copy of ADM to get access to my old data. That's less of a worry with EN.

Two things I HATE about EN, though
1. Notes don't allow true rich text formatting: you can't add a table or change the paragraph style within the program. Oddly, though, tables and various paragraph styles retain their formatting when pasted from other apps.

2. No embedded files. You can only embed PDFs. I would at least like a way to link to a file, but EN doesn't enable this because links to local files wouldn't work on the web. I have suggested that they integrate with a service like OneBox to easily add links to files stored on the web.

It has just occurred to me that tagging can be represented graphically by a Web diagram, or perhaps it is the reverse?

Some nodes in the web are tags and some are "items." Each item that, for example, is tagged by "Tag A," has a line (link) from Tag A to the item. But if, say, two tags are related, then they can also be linked.

This could easily become overwhelming without a proper interface which would not only need capabilities such as those in The Brain and Inspiration (e.g. centering on a specific node and being able to zoom (in or out) ones view of the web, but also the ability to display only selected parts of the web, rather like in InfoSelect enables one to see only selected parts (not necessarily contiguous) of the tree.

-c

Dan,

Thank you for the comprehensive review of EverNote's features. Of particular interest is your discussion of the value of tags. (By the way, MyInfo also does tags, and Surfulater is adding them.) My own opinion about tags is somewhat complicated. I can see their value, but also their shortcomings. One of the earliest programs I recall using tags is Personal Knowbase -- although they call them index words. This approach appealed to me early on, but I soon found that my list of index words (tags) grew longer than my list of actual notes. (For this and for other reasons I soon stopped using Personal Knowbase, although it remains a program I am fond of.)

Now that I've got one foot in the Mac OS side of things, I find that most of the information managers for Mac use tags, too. I have yet to make much us of this feature beyond a few simple tags (i.e. I will add a tag to any serial numbers I save identifying them as such).

It occurs to me that tags probably work better when used as a subordinant form of categorization -- at least for the way I work. For instance, I use MyInfo to capture data from web sites. First I drop the information into a specific database, then I add a tag, if appropriate. I agree with you, Dan, when you say that it is better to be able to add the tag at the time you capture the information, without having to open the application completely. That EverNote does this is a great benefit.

Nevertheless, I need more categorization than mere tags. It may just be as simple as multiple databases, but if I do this I want the ability to search across databases, not just in the current database -- that's the primary failing of Personal Knowbase. MyInfo allows multiple database searches, as does Zoot. Does EverNote?

Steve

Nevertheless, I need more categorization than mere tags. It may just be as simple as
multiple databases, but if I do this I want the ability to search across databases, not
just in the current database -- that's the primary failing of Personal Knowbase.
MyInfo allows multiple database searches, as does Zoot. Does EverNote?

Yes, you can search "all notebooks" in EverNote. And you're right - I do find myself categorizing stuff by putting different types of items in different notebooks. I find myself wishing that there was one tag set for each notebook, actually - so I wouldn't have to see a list of irrelevant tags when I just want to focus on one type of data.