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So, what do you folks do?
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Posted by David Dunham
May 2, 2010 at 12:54 AM
Software designer—I created Opal. Which I use to keep track of all my projects.
Posted by WSP
May 2, 2010 at 01:41 AM
I’m a lurker on this forum and a retired professor, with a particular interest in the history of the book. For my research and writing, I use MyInfo, Evernote, and NoteTab.
Posted by Lawrence Osborn
May 2, 2010 at 05:10 AM
shatteredmindofbob wrote:
>We’re all on this forum because we share a passion for outlining and PIM software but
>I’m curious, what kind of work does everyone here do that requires this software?
When I’m not lurking on this forum, I’m a freelance copy-editor, writer and theologian. For my sins, I’ve also become a kind of clearing house for information about Blackwell/Bekon Idealist, a venerable free-form text oriented database.
Lawrence
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 2, 2010 at 09:49 AM
Bob, this is one of the most interesting threads I have come across in this forum which I have avidly followed for many years!
I’m a consultant and project manager working on environment and business. My interest on information management software started on the personal level (groking the universe as Ms Julie calls it) but soon became professional: tools like Brainstorm and UltraRecall have given me a significant competitive advantage when trying to organise large amounts of data in a relatively short time. There have been projects I simply could not have undertaken without such tools.
I tend to work best with more ‘classic’ text-oriented tools, my newest interests being TreeSheets and InfoQube. I usually turn to mind-mappers, Personal Brain and the like only for presenting information to others.
The last couple of years I completed an online MBA; software like Surfulater proved once again invaluable. That said, I have spent so much time playing around with such software that I sometimes wonder about the net result.
Being a sort of nomad at work and also running a company with my business partner, my greatest challenges have been:
(a) combining tools in my PC with web-based offerings and (b) sharing my working tools with others in the team who only knew of spreadsheets and word processors.
Anybody wanting to liaise with me (I have already been in contact with a few in this list) can now find me on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
Lawrence Osborn wrote:
>For my sins, I’ve also become a kind of clearing
>house for information about Blackwell/Bekon Idealist, a venerable free-form text
>oriented database.
Funny you should say that; my first contact with free-form databases was in the early ‘90s with Idealist. At the time, Greek was my main working language and Idealist couldn’t handle it. Even today, with multilingual operating systems, I am surprised that several programs remain english-oriented and may even have trouble with accented latin characters.
Posted by Hugh
May 2, 2010 at 10:43 AM
I am a hack - initially in newspapers, then television, then in management consultancy and management, and latterly in books. Two or three years ago I more or less abandoned the PC for the Mac, having lusted after one or two tools that seemed better designed for the kind of writing I do than those I could find on Windows.
I first used outlines intensively when required to write and re-write long scripts about changing topics to tight deadlines. Even with a golf-ball typewriter, scissors and glue, you couldn’t re-cast a script fast enough. But you could re-cast an outline, and you could also clarify for yourself and others precisely what you meant. Yet as someone (Voltaire?) observed, writing short requires a lot more mental effort than writing long. I learnt a few techniques then about packing the maximum meaning into the minimum outline that I still use today and that make the digital outliners now available all the more valuable to me.