IdeaMason is available today, 11/24/2008 at a discount

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Posted by Cassius
Nov 24, 2008 at 07:32 AM

Here’s what one of our forum’s members said about it:

URL= http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/735/0/ideamason-semi-demystified

IdeaMason Semi-Demystified

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Posted by Gary Carson
May 25, 2008 at 02:15 PM

Well, after squealing like a stuck pig about IdeaMason?s incomprehensibility, I?m embarrassed to say that I?ve had a flash of illumination and the program turns out to be pretty simple after all. The interface is complex, but the basic concept is simple. When I first got IM and was trying to figure out how to use it, I was thinking in terms of other apps like OneNote where you have to follow a certain procedure to get started (create a notebook, create a section, start adding pages to the section). IdeaMason doesn?t work like that. It?s basically just a collection of tabbed views, each of which lets you collect and organize different kinds of information in different ways. To get started, you just start collecting information. Doesn?t matter what or where. It?s like a big filing cabinet. That?s all there is to it (though the interfaces themselves have a lot of features that let you build relationships between all these different pieces of information). Later, you can organize the stuff by categories or whatever and start building them into outlines in the composition pane. Very simple. Once the basic idea clicks, you can start collecting stuff right away. I haven?t used the Composition pane yet, just Material, Library and the Research List. The Research List is nice because it lets you drag hyperlinks directly from a browser to build up a list of web sources (among other things). There are a few odd quirks with refreshing the views, but nothing major. Overall, this looks like a fantastic information manager. Very powerful. I?ve only had it for a week, but I?m already thinking about switching from OneNote to IM eventually.

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