New Product Alert: Debrief

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 7, 2007 at 06:24 PM

Hello,

I just came across PIM software that I had never heard of before. It is called Debrief and it looks very promising. It comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Standard, and Pro. I’m going to be writing about the Pro version. On the surface it looks much like any three-pane outliner, with a few more buttons. It’s got a folder pane, an item pane and a note pane. Debrief provides several methods for cataloging your information:

By folders (or subject)
By type (contact, note, todo, followup, reference)
By keyword (Debrief builds an index of keywords)
By flag (various flags are available, but I don’t believe you can create your own)

So far, this is powerful, but not unique. Two additional features help make the program special:

One type of information item is the outline, so you can have a note document that features a hierarchical list. This outlining function is certainly not as sophisticated as the better independent outliners, but it is fairly powerful. Each individual item in the outline can have its own note, with its own subject and flag. That is, what you’re doing here is creating independent notes that are associated with items in your outline.

The other feature that seems special and interesting to me is that you can create what they call a card deck. That is, you can select cards from your existing list and organize them how you like, while viewing the results in a new pane which shows the material in a concatenated view.

There are other nice features, too. For example, the program automatically creates a new daily note each new day you start it. You can keep all your notes this way in diary form… view them with the calendar view. Or you can take your notes in the daily note, then organize them (Debrief them, in the program’s parlance) at the end of the day with a handy feature that allows you to create new notes from any material that is highlighted.

I’ve only just downloaded and installed the program, but I’m very impressed so far. There are a few shortcomings, such as no special features for capturing material from other sources other than copy and paste—even drag and drop does not appear to work.

The price is very reasonable. The Pro version is only $40 US. If you want to check it out, here’s the URL

http://debriefnotes.com/products.htm

Steve Z.