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Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 1, 2008 at 08:26 PM
Interesting… I didn’t know about that update to EagleFiler. I haven’t tried EF for a while. It’s definitely true that EF and Together are very close competitors.
One thing I’ve noticed is that QuickLook across the operating system is starting to pay off. For instance, you can store OmniOutliner documents inside Together now and interact with them (open/closing nodes) inside the program, without Together’s programmer having to add any special support for OO. Similarly, MindManager documents can also be stored and previewed. This really makes having a single repository a lot more practical than it would otherwise be.
—Chris
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Thank you for the Together suggestion. I have looked at Together in the
>past, but thought it was too redundant to Yojimbo, which I bought early on in my MacBook
>life. However, the more I learn about Together, the more it seems like a better product
>than Yojimbo. I am also intrigued by EagleFiler, especially now that its smart
>folders can perform actions on data… which makes EF start to sound like a Mac version
>of Zoot.
>
>Before shelling out money for either of those applications, I want to see
>what DevonThink 2.0 is like.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 1, 2008 at 11:49 PM
I posted the following in UR Is Dead before I realized it would fit better in this thread:
Jan and others, though I stopped using UR some time ago, I thought they had a going concern so I am somewhat surprised. However, I had noted the responses on the forum seemed less frequent than before.
And I agree with you, Jan, about the ?warmth? fact of Kinook?s corporate culture. I felt the cool in a number of ways; for one, as far as I could see, there was never any personal comment or indication even of where Kinook or who is Kinook.
As well, the documentation was more descriptive than instructive, and for a klutz like me that is not a good thing.
IQ and My Info, as I see the market, are the only ones doing metadata in columnar form. I am watching IQ carefully.
I notice that in the My Info forums the developer?s responses are also less frequent than they once were. I suspect that other, more lucrative aspects of the business are taking his attention. There has been no date given for beginning work on version 5.
IDEA! hasn?t upgraded since 2006. I wrote to the developer and asked, receiving a vague response about a future upgrade. It?s too bad, because IDEA! seems to be a neat ?dashboard? kind of program.
Omea and Chandler are both open source, and Chandler may be more actively developed than Omea, but both are moving like over-fed snails, ie. you wonder whether they are moving at all.
I have recently installed Surfulater 3 http://www.surfulater.com . I am impressed with the development of Surfulater, and its ability to capture web information accurately. It is now better than Evernote, and certainly for serious web researchers it offers more capability, with both a full folder and full tagging capability. Evernote 3, in an effort to be the app that can be installed on just about anything, excepting the kitchen sink, left its loyal info-centric users behind; the developer?s continuing assurances that EN would eventually restore version 2 features removed from version 3 began to wear thin some time ago.
InfoHandler for many of its loyal users might as well have gone out of business because its IH2008 product, for which it charges, is still incomplete and the Yahoo group has been dead for most of the last several months, except for a long post today wondering if 2008 was completed yet.
So I am happy with Surfulater web clipping performances, and am looking at it as a notetaker. It has some templates, and the frame that surrounds Surfulater?s content is in essence a metadata card. I am rethinking my love of columns, and wondering whether I and perhaps others use programs that are more feature rich than we really need.
And I miss ADM and the potential of that program. The only program I see that could fulfill the ADM vision and move beyond it is IQ.
Daly
I like Neville Franks, Surfulater?s developer. He is consistently responsive to all manner of customers concerns, and is fast to make sure that they are dealt with.
Jan Rifkinson wrote:
>Altho this is greatly disappointing….. & frustrating….. this action does not
>come as a surprise to me. In fact, I suggested it?s possibility once before & was
>shouted down. So be it.
> >I strongly believe that besides having a great product?
>like UR?open, kindly, friendly, welcoming customer support is just as essential to
>the potential success of any product.
> >Yes, for those of you who are technically
>oriented, kinook has always been prompt in replying to technical questions posted
>here. Now I suppose this is all that should be required of technical support, ie.. ask a
>question, get the answer.
> >But, to me, both the information & the approach has always
>been highly technical & cold & frequently over my head.
> >A smile goes a long way in this
>world. IMO, UltraRecall was never going to break out of its small technoworld with
>that approach.
> >Like Agenda, Ecco & ADM before it, UR leaves behind a mature,
>unfinished product & a bunch of users who now have a tough decision to make…. and if
>they decide to move on….. hours & hours of work before getting their life back in
>order.
> >None the less, I don?t wish Kinook any ill. I hope they succeed as I do all other
>small software companies whom I have spent thousands & thousands of dollars
>supporting over the years.
> >Happy Halloween.
> >—
>Jan Rifkinson
>Ridgefield CT
>USA
Posted by Jack Crawford
Nov 2, 2008 at 02:56 AM
Interesting topic (the main game I guess) and thought provoking comments.
It’s disappointing about UR but that is the bleeding edge world of software. While I own a licence I haven’t used UR since a particularly nasty experience with Kinook. I’m afraid that I can’t say any more in an open forum.
My observations FWIW:
I agree with the comments that a single PIM repository is not necessarily a good thing or a realistic expectation. After a great many painful experiences backing the wrong software horse and even operating systems (I wasted half a life on OS/2), I’ve lately realised that it is all about contexts.
CONTEXT 1
Is it a work context or personal hobby context? I’m in the first context and I simply don’t have the time to be moving data into a central repository no matter how easy it is. I have tried it many times, most recently with OneNote, and as soon as work pressures build, I stop moving emails, file links etc into the central PIM.
My work system has to be totally automated and in my face most of the time for me to maintain the discipline. Also the benefits have to justify the effort. You soon realise that if the effort involved in maintaining and interrogating the central repository does not consistently help you directly, you fall off the wagon. Sometimes it happens subliminally, without you even being aware that you have stopped doing it, before it is too late. You then feel guilty about your failure to be “productive”.
CONTEXT 2
So what system should you use? What’s been working for me lately (spectacularly so, to my great surprise) is that the system I use is rooted in the context in which I operate most of the time. Specifically, do you operate in a world driven by email, or project management, or creative writing, or web research etc etc?
I’m currently in a world in which most of my tasks and projects are driven by email. After years of trying to move data out of email systems, I now use Outlook “properly” using Clear Context and the Michael Linenberger system. It’s like a load has been lifted off my shoulders. My productivity has increased and I’m no longer worried about maintaining “the system”. It looks after itself and I can concentrate on the things that matter. I still use OneNote - but more creatively for drafts, meeting preparations and so forth - not as a catch-all repository. I’m also keeping an eye on InfoQube which seems to be progressing very well.
By inference, if I was writer or a researcher I would be using alternative tools that work better in those contexts.
In summary it’s horses for courses. Use what works best for you and your world - and don’t get too distracted about the latest you-beaut all in one solution that seems to promise the world but is unlikely to deliver.
Jack
Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 2, 2008 at 06:56 AM
I guess one has to start with their own personal definition of a single repository. For me, it doesn’t make sense to store everything in one place, e.g. email is already stored in an email client (why duplicate?), RSS is already in an RSS client, likewise with media and photos. All of this is searchable in a single systemwide search with modern operating systems.
The need for a heterogeneous repository in my view is largely for things that don’t have a more natural “home.” Saved web pages, scanned newspaper articles, PDF files, audio recordings from meetings, miscellaneous notes and outlines, snippets of thoughts. If I wasn’t storing that somewhere, it would just start to accumulate on the desktop, so doing nothing isn’t really an option. Using the filesystem is fine (and better than clunky software, for sure), but you end up with things that should be in more than one topic or directory and it’s difficult to work organically with subsets of the items for short term projects. Good software can help here. Obviously one might have a handful of repositories for different types of information (e.g. work-related/personal) too.
—Chris
Posted by jamesofford
Nov 3, 2008 at 04:04 AM
I had the good fortune to be able to use Together on a MacBook Air that I was trying out as part of a pilot program at work. It is much like Devonthink and Eagefiler, but I found the implementation of Smart Groups(Folders)to be very nice and easy to use. Eaglefiler has a new version which is supposed to work as well as Together, but you need to be running Leopard to take advantage of the features. I downloaded and installed Eaglefiler’s latest version and I will probably upgrade to Leopard soon so that I can take advantage of the Smart Groups, but I am also waiting to see what Devonthink Pro 2.0 is like
The bottom line is that we Mac users have a very rich set of options.
This is not to start a religious war over Mac vs. PC. I use them both, and these days both operating systems are very close in capabilities.
However, the Mac seems to have drawn the people who want to do the info management thing, at least as far as development s concerned.
I’d love to have a version of any of these programs to run on my work PC.
Jim