James Fallows on The Personal Brain

Posted by Al Cantley
Aug 27, 2009 at 11:33 PM

Steve,

I agree that PB Notes editor is not a good writing environment. PB has been my primary repository for “nuggets” of information since 1998, however. Version 3 used an rtf editor and it was adequate for writing (I used it in conjunction with Macro Toolworks) but since then I have primarily used Atlantis (http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/) for annotating and writing with the storage, organization & linking remaining in PB. Atlantis is ideally suited as a complement to PB since it has a toolbar option to copy to clipboard as HTML. So my longer notes are composed in Atlantis and pasted into the PB notes pane in HTML format; shorter notes are written in PB. Atlantis has many ease of use features and is highly configurable. Some of the key features: projects, control board, tabs, clipboard management, configurability, etc. (a downside is no tables). I believe Manfred uses Atlantis also - but in conjunction with ConnectedText.

I am thankful for PB; it enables organization based on the network, hierarchy, and sequence paradigms. In the past 15 years my activities have primarily involved research, analysis, and organization. PB’s thought and link typing features make it easy to find pertinent information. As I begin to share my findings more widely I will use another tool; but having my PB database is essential. I haven’t decided what writing tool to use for large writing projects. I’m considering Whizfolders, OneNote, ConnectedText and others.

Al Cantley