Outliner/PIM roll call: Fall 2011

Posted by Steve
Oct 1, 2011 at 12:51 PM

Here are my tools currently being used to capture, manipulate, and report information:

Hardware:
Toshiba laptop (big, business style) running Windoze Vista. Mostly it stays anchored to the side of my desk like a desktop computer. I’ve got a wireless mouse and keyboard plus a 20” monitor attached.
New item; HP 500 Slate http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06a/321957-321957-64295-3841267-3955550-4332585.html. Windoze 7 on it so no need to get different software. It works very well reading and writing while mobile.

A side note; I believe PIM’s are just that ? personal. No PIM software handles everyone’s personal needs well. It helps to understand why someone likes or dislikes a PIM if it is known what they do. In my case, I’m a travel agent by vocation plus very active in my church and college fraternity. Add to that other community organizations and you get a sense most of my data revolves around people.

I love to read and research religious and travel related “stuff” also so most of my data I capture is text based.

Primary software for data:
Intellect from http://www.chaossoftware.com/ . It really does a wonderful job for me managing almost 2500 contacts, thousands of e-mails, and all the meetings with tasks I have.
chaoshost.com. This is the “cloud” version of Intellect. Primarily I have it to provide secure, immediate off-site storage of my data and to synchronize this data with my phone.
AskSam. I know it has its problems. I know there is doubt about its future. It handles and reports everything I need in a way that works best for me. AskSam finds things for me lightening fast, but the biggest thing is how It captures web data. Highlight the section of a web page you want then right-click to send to Asksam The dialog box allows me a couple of basic options with three fields: Title, Keyword, and Note. I enter the client’s name in the keyword field and more descriptive name in the Title. The database is setup to sort by that keyword field so all the research I do for clients during the course of my busy day is right there. I don’t have to rearrange the data after capture like I did with UR.
FinePrint with PDF Factory. Fineprint.com . Fineprint creates anything I want to print into a document with my letterhead already integrated - ready to go. PDF Factory does just that - creates the pdf to e-mail and save.
Brainstorm for capturing text, creating outlines with text, brainstorming, creating those cool Javascript html files to share with others.
Bonsai outliner used in conjunction with Brainstorm.
LinkStash (weblinks)

Besides Fineprint, the primary programs all have an essential feature to me; exporting to universal formats such as .csv, .txt, .rtf.

For manipulation of data:
Brainstorm
Notetab Pro text editor.
Atlantis Word Processor
Lotus WordPro - it still works and works real well with my marketing templates.

Steve