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Thoughts on Ecco in light of recent events
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Posted by Ken
Nov 6, 2008 at 10:28 PM
It may just be another case of CRIMP, but I have been thinking about my tried and true Ecco in light of recent events (suspension of UR; potential launch of IQ; new version of Surfulator). I am still using Ecco as it meets most of my current needs. I am now considering a web capture program, most likely separate from my PIM program, to help me better track information that I hunt down on the web. As I ponder the current developments (both for PIM and web capture), what comes to my mind is that there are many great programs out there, but few that do well one thing that Ecco makes quite easy for me. I would have previously sid that it was the ability to have customiezed columns, but that is only part of it. What Ecco makes easy, and certainly columns are a big contributor to this ease, is the ability to look at the same piece of data in multiple contexts or views.
This is extremely important for me with task management. For example, I like the ability to put my tasks on a calendar with alarms, have the ability to view them on a notepad sorted by project (with columns showing other selected data), and having them on another note pad sorted by priority (with columns showing other selected data). This may have been possible in UR, but that is somewhat moot for me at the moment. I am guessing it might be possible in IQ, and I am now starting to look at the betas that have been recently released (and I like that the application is portable as well). But, I am surprised that more developers cannot see the value of customizable columns and the ability to look at the same data in different contexts. Perhaps I have not been looking, err I mean CRIMPing, hard enough, but I would have thoguth that this “concept” would be more polular over the years? Are MyInfo and IQ the only two that make an attempt to meet this need? Tagging and categories are great, but they do not easily seem to offer multiple views on the same data. Any thoughts?
—Ken
Posted by Mike H
Nov 7, 2008 at 11:40 AM
You should take a look at InfoQube at sqlnotes.net: http://sites.google.com/site/infoqube/Home Pierre has built the software with Ecco users in mind, but has taken it into a number of other areas, as well. He recently added a calendar, which has a lot more features to be implemented.
Mike
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 7, 2008 at 04:57 PM
I have begun using EccoPro once again since learning of the Ecco extension, which really adds a lot of great functionality to this terrific program. I think Ecco was a high water point for PIMs in the Windows world (GrandView was for the DOS world). Unlike some, however, I don’t see Ecco as the right tool to manage all my stray data. I use it for project planning and tracking and list building. For information capture and management, I use Zoot (BTW: Tom Davis says the beta for Zoot 6 with text formatting will be available in January). And for project-centric material I use OneNote—which I also use when the material just doesn’t fit into Zoot’s current plain-text format.
The Mac world makes having different views of your PIM data easier—as many programs integrate with the Apple calendar application, iCal. In Circus Ponies Notebook you build outlines, any item of which can be a task, which can be sync’d to iCal, for instance. But even in Macs, having customizable columnar data is not common. I’m sure there are other choices, but the only one I’m aware of off the top of my head is OmniOutliner, but that doesn’t have a calendar application.
InfoQube does look very promising, although I also find it quite imposing. For what it’s worth, Pierre, I like the new name—quite clever.
Steve Z.
Posted by Ken
Nov 7, 2008 at 05:12 PM
Mike H wrote:
>You should take a look at InfoQube at sqlnotes.net:
>http://sites.google.com/site/infoqube/Home Pierre has built the software with
>Ecco users in mind, but has taken it into a number of other areas, as well. He recently
>added a calendar, which has a lot more features to be implemented.
>
>Mike
Mike,
Actually I did mention Info Qube in my post. I just used the abbreviated version that is sometimes being used in posts - IQ. It does look daunting, as has been mentioned, but if it is stable, I may slowly invest the time.
Stephen, do you find the Ecco Extension easy to work with? And, is it stable?
—Ken
Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 7, 2008 at 05:40 PM
There really still is nothing that beats Ecco as a personal project/task/information management application. Pierre’s work on IQ is as close as anything comes to Ecco, but the calendar is still rough and the user interface is somewhat frustrating. (But he definitely deserves kudos for his work on it… and it does have things like the ability to hide context parents in notepads and integrated web capture, probably the two biggest limitations of Ecco.) I wouldn’t abandon Ecco if it suits your needs, especially now that it’s so programmable. There’s nowhere to move to yet, though you should watch the evolution of IQ carefully.
One thing I’ve considered is getting one of those small 9-inch netbook computers just to run Ecco (and perhaps a mail client)—basically the ultimate single purpose PIM.
These days for task management/project planning I’ve been running OmniFocus 1.5. It’s a hierarchical task planner with support for contexts and multiple views (which it calls perspectives). Unfortunately it doesn’t allow the creation of custom columns, though if you don’t follow GTD you can use the context column for something else. I would have preferred a less GTD-focused and more general data model (like Ecco), though on the plus side, it has a concept of sequential/parallel projects that is difficult to implement automatically in Ecco. It’s currently OmniGroup’s most profitable product and it seems to be evolving rapidly, though it looks like they’re going to focus on a new version of OmniOutliner (which I also use) for the next release cycle.
—Chris