Re: The Bottom Line

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2244

Posted by sub
2004-10-14 06:37:58

[ The ability to be able to move between different apps as seamlessly as possible seems IMHO much more useful than searching for the ultimate one-stop solution. ]

I most definitely agree; in fact, that’s one of the reasons that XML can make such a big difference, as it facilitates the interoperability you seek. OLE is another useful technology, allowing objects within documents to be edited by the original application that created them.

For the moment, I do most of my creative work (texts mostly) in Brainstorm and Hyperclip. I only export final texts to Word and Powerpoint for dissemination and presentation purposes. (If my outliner supported tables, such as InfoStore does, I would keep them there too and only export to Excel.) If any of my peers suggests a significant change, I will probably note it directly in the original outline and re-export.

I’ve tried MindManager, MindGenius and CMap Tools and finally ended up with the simple but poweful FreeMind for mind maps. Copy/Paste from Brainstorm to FreeMind automatically creates a map of the Brainstorm model.

IDEA! seems indeed very useful for keeping track of the versions of documents aimed to the outside world. Another (free) option is Columbus, though optimised for technical documents, plans etc. Personal Brain represents an interesting “sci-fi” approach. Last but not least, MyBase can automatically create an outline of folders and files in a directory, facilitating organisation.

The one essential application I’m still having trouble integrating is e-mail. Most software only links to Outlook but I find that a “bloated whale” full of security holes. As far as I know however, it’s the only program offering full drag-n-drop for messages. For example, you can drag-n-drop an Outlook message to Personal Brain, and it will create a link to the original message.

alx

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