EN 3 Changes and a Market Overview

Posted by Daly de Gagne
May 6, 2008 at 11:07 PM

I can’t recall whether we had much talk here about EverNote 3 beta and the developer’s plan to create a program that would integrate hardware and web, and truly be able to function as an external brain wherever one was.

There are big fears—groundless or not I do not know—that EN 2.2 which saw the product as a pretty sound top of the field web clipper, and information manager may no longer be supported, that functionality will be lost, and people who do not wish to be will find themselves having to store data on the web.

I think this may be worth talking about for a few reasons, because of changes we’ve seen in the field and what it means to us users:
* I am declaring ADM as deader than a doornail and no longer on the market until either Ed or Arne have the courtesy to let their form loyal and trusted testers know to the contrary. For all we know, their Chinese dealings may have earned them so much they don’t need us, or got them into so much trouble they don’t have time for us.
* MDE Infohandler, once one of my favourite tools for the way it handled categories, took a major paradigm shift in design that many people hate, and many of us cannot quite understand. I suspect, given the lack of discussion on the list that it could be in a tough position keeping market.
* UltraRecall has great—though slow and not as good as Evernote’s—capabilities as a web clipper, plus metadata features and other ways of massaging information. A strong player, and one that showed the ability to shift in mid stream when user pressure resulted in a hoist feature. Way to go Kinook!
* MyInfo’s developed its metadata capability, created an approach to columns that is more intuitive, though less flexible than UR’s, but in spite of user requests did little to improve web clip capability and did not agree to develop hoist.
*Whizfolders markets itself as a writer’s program, and a note-taker, and has developed a sophistication over the years with keywords, tehmplates, and now in its last version, the ability to hoist and to appear as one-pane outliner.
*Whizfolders and EN have a feature I find very useful, and that is to be able to open a separate window so that two sets of material may be seen side by side. This is helpful when writing.
* InfoSelect has made a few attempts to come into the modern edge with smart folders and a half-hearted hoisting mechanism which essentially involved saving the Selector in different configurations. But it is still as quirky as hell, and recent speculation on the group was Yuri is running the show pretty much by himself. Don’t look for much in the future from IS, except that it will go the way of Infohandler and ADM as its users—often a well brainwashed group who are unaware of the power available in the competitor’s products—realize it feels good to stop hitting your head against the wall and find software that does at least 90 percent of what it is designed to do.
* Zoot has the most raw potential of any of the products—but the question is whether the Admiral will be able to out maneuver the cigarette boats zooming around in Floridian waters. He has the best software design capabilities of anyone that I have ever seen—but the reality is that he may have to start replacing sail power with horsepower, and get a couple 2500 HP inboard diesels and a power boat large enough to put some other programmers.
* SQL Notes has risen rapidly over the last years from ECCOs ashes, following a squabble among ECCO freaks that resembled a bunch of Trotskyist tendencies fighting it out at common front unity rally. SQL Notes looks impressive, and may end up doing both what the old ECCO did (which it somewhat resembles in appearance), and a whole pile more related to metadatam manipulating information, storing information, itself.
* Some of us like these program as well because they let us bring different resources together. Most the programs mentioned already let you do, to set up project files or a dashboard of sorts. In addition to the outline type programs, there`s Syncon IDEA!, which hasn`t been updated for a few years but is pretty elegant if not attractive, and OMEA Pro, both designed to bring everything together. Mindmap programs can be set up to those functions. Two mindmap variations, Topicscape and Personal Brain have taken some interesting approaches, but neither turn me on completely.
Treepad is an old standby, but Henk for some reason turned his back on information management, and went more for web site application of the product—it was too bad because he was one of the first to have a real nice approach to use of icons, recognition of the need for word processing capability, etc. His Treepad group used to be active, but now it is pretty dead.
* I do not know enough about MyBase to say anything, except that I used it some years ago, before going to TreePad, found the developer helpful, and know from the reports of at least one of our members that it seems like a strong product with a responsive developer.
* GemX`s outliner program and PIM both seem to be underwhelming although they have all the eye candy one might expect to find in a Dutch confectionary.

I don`t know what I left out by way of an overview.

My hope is that Evernote doesn`t screw itself, and that if there are people here who are concerned they might, that they ought to hit the forums.

Daly

PS And let us know of any Arne or Eric sightings.