New outline-based PIM is in the works

Posted by Phil Seeman
May 2, 2006 at 08:44 PM

Back in the 1990’s, I founded and ran Catalyst Innovations, doing consulting and add-ons for ECCO Pro (and I wrote ECCO’s Correspondence Manager and Mail Merge Wizard components).

After waiting close to ten years for a good successor to ECCO to show up, and being disappointed with each of the subsequent PIMs, I finally gave up waiting and last December decided to create one. Yes, it’s a daunting task, but I bring to the table over 25 years of software development and of studying and working in the field of personal and group information management.

Following is some basic information about the app that you will probably want to know.

- Its basic structure is the “outliner with columns”. The columns are user-definable and can be of a variety of data types. You can maintain multiple lists (my terminology for ECCO’s folders/notepads), and items can exist in more than one list.

- My development approach differs from some other current PIM efforts: rather than attempting to build a comprehensive platform initially (can you say Chandler?), I’m starting with the basics, and will add functionality as time goes on, especially if the basics prove to be successful. (This is due in part to a difference in my development philosophy, and also because I have a bit less resources at my disposal than Mitch Kapor does!)

- It is a Windows-only app, partly because that platform still addresses the majority of today’s marketplace, and partly because that’s the development environment I know and making a cross-platform solution would slow me down considerably.

- In its initial implementation, it uses an MS Access MDB for its data store, but will ultimately be able to use any OLE DB data source. The data is stored in standard database tables and thus is wide open for interfacing purposes.

- As a believer in and practitioner of the Getting Things Done methodology, I can assure you that the program will be very compatible with using a GTD approach.

- I’ve devoted the bulk of my post-ECCO career to developing applications based around Microsoft Outlook. So you can be sure that this app and Outlook will be well-integrated, including Calendar, Contacts, and e-mail.

- I plan to sell it as a shareware or commercial product, so as to provide resources to be able to continue developing and enhancing it.

- It is initially a single-user application, but I hope to expand it to multi-user if the initial version is successful.

- PDA sync capability is another feature that will likely not be present initially, but will be important to add.

- I’m not able to devote full time to the project given other business commitments, but am working on it as much as I can. I hope to have an early beta to post within the next two to three months. So stay tuned!