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Where are the exciting developments?
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Posted by Manfred
Jan 22, 2009 at 08:43 PM
Steve,
thanks for acknowledging, and letting me taking it in the way it was intended.
Best,
Manfred
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 22, 2009 at 08:58 PM
Manfred wrote:
>Steve,
>thanks for acknowledging, and letting me taking it in the way it was
>intended.
>Best,
>Manfred
My pleasure, Manfred. I don’t want to have given the impression that I don’t like ConnectedText. I think it is a really fabulous program in many ways, so I am glad that the pace of development is greater than I thought. And, this is the kind of thing I wanted to learn about when I started this thread… what applications get others on this forum excited for the future of this software niche? I really greatly value the ideas and opinions expressed here.
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Jan 22, 2009 at 11:32 PM
Not sure about excitement, but for innovation Flying Logic (http://flyinglogic.com/) and to a lesser extent the similar but slightly more orthodox Rationale (http://rationale.austhink.com/tour) ought to rate quite highly. Not exactly PIMs but certainly graphical outliners.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 23, 2009 at 08:54 AM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I suppose
>the world wide economic downturn isn’t helping matters. But all the more reason for an
>out-of-work programming wizard to devote more time to the ultimate PIM.
Well, the fact that many programmers may be out of work doesn’t mean that their time is free. They still have to eat! Dedicating a couple of years at least to come up with something original enough for users to be willing to pay for it, is an investment too few people are likely to make, regardless of their genius.
The alternative is what we see around us: information managers built on default controls that as a result all look alike. Things get even worse when .NET drops in. Then they all look alike and are snail-fast. But the reduction in development effort that such tools provide is huge.
Thus it becomes non-competitive to build things from scratch—the end-product could be very expensive. Look at how few PIMs have their own tree control: UltraRecall, Surfulater, InfoQube (I think) are the only ones I am aware of.
New business models are required. Evernote’s service based model is one; others, like Mind Manager, are still charging for their application and offering a service model for sharing as an option. Pierre has linked InfoQube to his consultancy and I think that’s brilliant.
Unfortunately not all ‘programming wizards’ are marketing-wise enough. And at this time and place, they need to be.
Alexander
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 23, 2009 at 09:02 AM
P.S. Re excitement. Apart for InfoQube and Evernote, I am excited at what is going on in the mobile world. The iPhone has already sparked a wave of development, probably because of the tools it provides and the huge market it brings programmers to. Take a look at this for exanple:
http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/8-mind-mapping-apps-for-the-iphone/
I had written elsewhere that applications, in order to be successful, will need to become web-aware and cross-platform; I would note that ‘cross-platform’ includes not only Windows / Mac / Linux, but also mobile ones.