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

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

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.

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

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

Ken wrote:

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.

Well, frankly, I would argue that tagging is indeed a way of showing different views of the same data. So are other possibilities provided by the various info managers discussed here:

- Imagine a common two-pane outliner, where information items are organised on a hierarchical tree.
- Now imagine those items being tagged, and tags organised on another hierarchical tree.
- Now switch to the tag tree view (you can do this in Surfulater for example) and you instantly have another view of the information items.
- Surfulater in particular can also show a chronological tree, with items automatically organised in month folders. (From what Neville Franks has written, other views may be offered in the future).

Here's another approach in mind mapping:

- Imagine a mind map with a central topic and several branches.
- Now imagine being able to choose any topic from any branch and rearrange the map by making that topic the central one (I think MindGenius can do that; obviously, the program actually relying on this approach as its main advantage is Personal Brain)

Now, obviously, all of the above are modern "visual" approaches, and what you are referring to are more classic "database" views. I would argue that not all data is suitable for depicting on a table.

In any case, it is true that there's very few information managers that combine outlining with multiple database columns. You mentioned InfoQube, which is by far the most versatile, and rapidly developing. Another one is List Pro which is definitely worth a second look. I should also mention UltraRecall, though its columns can't be viewed on the tree.

In addition, it is worth noting that "attributes" are slowly but steadily making their way to mindmapping. Both Freemind and Mind Manager support attributes for their topics. I imagine that it's only a matter of time before someone offers the ability to view those attributes in a single sortable table.

Cheers
Alexander

Ken wrote:

Stephen, do you find the Ecco Extension easy to work with? And, is it
stable?

Yes, it has been easy to work with -- once I figured out that I need to use Ecco Extension to start the program. That is, I had to create a shortcut to Ecco Extension, and that opens Ecco and adds the new functions -- one of the chief of which is system tray support. So far I've found it very stable, although when I go to exit Ecco, it creates some sort of issue with a clipping program I use, and that shuts down too.

Steve Z.

A friend of mine tipped me off about Emacs "org-mode" today. I was amazed! (I had taken a look at it years ago and at that time it wasn't anything special, but it's come a very long way.) It's a text-based outliner mode for Emacs, with support for todos, contexts, tags, appointments, recurrences, file aggregation, *columnar data*, and multiple views including calendar, agenda, and filtered views. A couple things it does that Ecco doesn't do include multi-state todos (e.g. undone, in progress, deferred, completed, etc.) and the ability to tentatively schedule todos. Also, it can generate iCalendar files for viewing in another application like Outlook or iCal.

Really quite impressive. The downside is that it's meant for extremely technical users who can appreciate Emacs. But it should appeal to cross-platform users and those who like the "Zen" of working primarily in text mode. I'm going to investigate more. The website is here:
http://orgmode.org

-- Chris

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

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.

Steve Z.

Steve

Just to add TAO Outliner, which like OmniOutliner does customisable columns but also does clones and other functionality that OO doesn't yet: http://artec-software.com/products/neo/en_index.html

Not to be confused with a Windows application with a similar name.

It's easy to be critical of TAO (the UI for one is very far from from straightforward, development seems to be sporadic at best and I've suffered the odd freeze, though never lost any data), but once you've figured it out it's very versatile. I've recently used it successfully to plan a book in a way that would probably have been less easy if not impossible with OO.

I hope OO 4 will provide a step forward - soon. But I'm led to believe TAO already approaches the sorts of levels of functionality possessed by old-style outliners like More and Grandview that I'm too much of an upstart to remember!

H

H

Chris Thompson wrote:

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.

Chris,

I had the exact same thought when the EEE PC came out w/XP installed. Now our netbook choices seem endless! I only wish there was a way to have an XP machine boot up quickly. I like DateBk on my Palm, but I believe that a netbook with Ecco would be ideal for me.

--Ken

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Well, frankly, I would argue that tagging is indeed a way of showing
different views of the same data. So are other possibilities provided by the various
info managers discussed here:

- Imagine a common two-pane outliner, where
information items are organised on a hierarchical tree.
- Now imagine those items
being tagged, and tags organised on another hierarchical tree.
- Now switch to the
tag tree view (you can do this in Surfulater for example) and you instantly have
another view of the information items.
- Surfulater in particular can also show a
chronological tree, with items automatically organised in month folders. (From
what Neville Franks has written, other views may be offered in the future).

In any case, it is true that there's
very few information managers that combine outlining with multiple database
columns. You mentioned InfoQube, which is by far the most versatile, and rapidly
developing. Another one is List Pro which is definitely worth a second look. I should
also mention UltraRecall, though its columns can't be viewed on the tree.

Alexander,

I was not aware that some programs could use tags to create views (I was mostly thinking filtering with tags). This would certainly be useful if the views could be saved and recalled with ease. The multiple columns, in combination with these views, though, are very useful when performing task management. I will give Surfulator a look soon. Does it install and uninstall easily?

--Ken

Ken wrote:

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.

Ecco + web capture = EccoMV


( http://EccoMV.com )

I believe IQ, i.e. InforQube does what you want.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA