Best personal information, knowledge and idea manager software?

Posted by Hillman
Dec 23, 2013 at 10:03 PM

@22111: I am not sure whether a special forum for Info Select / IS 10 and Lotus Organizer are needed, since they represent the earliest outliner and PIM software. Both, I believe, are quite well known and best of breed. A few days ago, BTW, there was a new IS 10 release. It is now IS 10.00.100. So, whilst the Yahoo forum may be very quiet, IS actually is being maintained and improved. The Lotus Organizer 6.1 cross-link function I mentioned can be described as following (it actually is called “Links”):

You can create links between discrete pieces of information in different sections in Organizer or between entries in the same section. Creating links lets you cross-reference associated Organizer material. For example, you can link an appointment in your Calendar to a person in your Contacts section for quick access to that person’s phone number. You can also create multiple links from an appointment scheduled in Calendar to all the Contact records of the people attending the appointment and to a Notepad page that holds the meeting agenda. In addition to linking information, you can also link Organizer information to other files or applications. For example, you can link a scheduled budget appointment to a spreadsheet that contains budget forecasts. You can link Contact records to a comment about that contact, such as meeting notes. You can also link Organizer information to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address on the Internet. For example, you can link a sales meeting to your client’s home page on the Web. To keep track of your linked information, you can create a Notepad page with links to all the information for one project or to your most commonly used applications.

Should you need further information, I can highly recommend the following website: http://pcs-bihn.eu/lotus-organizer/programmdetails/index.php . Unfortunately, it is in German only. The company comes from Western Germany and actively develops add-ons to LO 6.1. They also sell LO 6.1, together with their add-ons. On their website, they provide ample information on LO 6.1 However, I do not know whether their LO 6.1 is in German or multilingual. I forgot whether there are language options in LO 6.1, since I always use English.

@notbalok: I wrote that Lotus Organizer 6.1 forms part of IBM SmartSuite 9.8.2. That, however, is not the case, as I just discovered. I recently ordered SmartSuite 9.8.2 (the last commercially available version) and noticed that it contains LO 5! So, the only way to get hold of LO 6.1 would be getting in touch with IBM. Sorry for that error on my side.

@Steve: You were right. IBM announced back in May 2013 that they would stop supporting SmartSuite in September 2014. I had a look at Chaos (ChaosSoftware) some time ago. What really bothered me were the limited import / export functions. I want the .dbf option, since I key in my contacts in dBase IV for DOS since 1991. I think that if you decide to work with a certain PIM, you really need 100% commitment, i.e. switching back and forth is not an option. So, I decided to stay with LO which it appears I will be able to use for some more years.

As far as the cloud functions are concerned: For me, this is a no-go. I value privacy and my data is not part of the public domain. I got a tiny 32 GB memory stick with me all the time (but not encrypted with Truecrypt, mind you). It contains all the data plus software I currently need. The rest is on external USB drives.