Noah

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 17, 2008 at 03:25 PM

This looks like an interesting piece of software, but it hardly replaces a good information manager. First of all, it doesn’t appear to have any serious note taking capability. Second, you have to capture full web pages and not just pieces of text from those pages. Third, you can only associate your information with “contacts,” and not with specific topics. I gather that “contacts” don’t necessarily have to be people… they can be things as well. Nevertheless, it seems less than intuitive. Fourth, the timeline view is handy, but it would be nice to be able to view data in other aspects.

Noah looks like it could be a very useful e-mail manager, but its limitations make it an inadequate replacement for OneNote, Zoot or any of the other powerful information managers we discuss.

In some ways it reminds me of a now defunct program called Correlate (http://www.correate.com) in which you drag in documents and e-mail and other information from diverse sources to build a knowledge map. But with Correlate, you built your knowledge map as a hierarchy of topics, rather than on a timeline basis.

Anyway, while it isn’t as visually appealing, you should be able to achieve the same timeline perspective using EverNote… but EverNote is a far more powerful information manager… but one without the e-mail capabilities of Noah.

It does make one wonder how a company can build a product that it gives away… there must be an income stream from somewhere. Maybe they rely on “volume.” ; )

Steve Z.