Outliner/PIM roll call: Fall 2011

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Posted by jimspoon
Sep 24, 2011 at 07:12 PM

for me all of these are very important parts of “personal information management”:

voice notes: Olympus VN-8100PC
outlining: Ecco Pro
journaling: Ecco Pro
time tracking: ManicTime
Email: Gmail, Thunderbird, Pop Peeper
RSS feed reader: Google Reader
Webpage Saver: Firefox Scrapbook with Autosave
Spreadsheets: Google Docs, Excel, OpenOffice Calc
Money Manager: Microsoft Money
File Finder: Voidtools Everything, Locate32
PDF Printer: Bullzip PDF Printer
PDF Reader/Annotator: PDF X-Change Viewer
File Manager: xplorer2, Windows Explorer, STDU Explorer
Program Launcher: Bayden SlickRun
Contacts: Google Contacts, Outlook
Calendar: Google Calendar, Outlook
Instant Messenger: Yahoo Messenger, GMail chat, Skype
Document Scanning: Paperport
Image Management: Windows Live Photo Gallery, Picasa, Irfanview, Xnview
Phone: Google Voice
Screen Capture: PicPick
Sync Tool: Dropbox
Password Manager: LastPass

Lots of room for improvement, lots of strengths and weaknesses, etc.

jim

Posted by Pavi
Sep 24, 2011 at 07:15 PM

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

>Though, I kinda wish stuff wasn’t so scattered.

Hi, my workflow changed dramatically to de-scatter data. For me, having a central data store is invaluable for archival and cross-referenced search, thus the switch to Ultra Recall. Previously, I used EssentialPim Pro, Mybase 5.5.1, Onenote and Web Research 3 - all of these are replaced by UR. No, I don’t work for Kinook! Other potential all-in-one apps I considered were InfoCube, Zoot and recently ConnectedText.

My rollcall:
Ultra Recall - GTD, web clippings, notes, email archive, work files, home data, research
Outlook 2010 - locked into due to work, email and @work GTD
Mendeley - Organize PDFs and share with colleagues (Important ones to save are copied to UR). Also for bibliography system in Word.
Notepad++ - text editing and coding
Storybook 3.0.0: story creation, this update makes the program really useful so I will post separately about this
Thoughtoffice: brainstorming

I plan to add Flying Logic 2 when (if) I can justify the license cost.

Best, /Pavi

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Sep 24, 2011 at 07:25 PM

I live in the world of a Windows PC at work and a MacBook for personal use. Here are the information management applications I use most:

Work (Windows):
- PersonalBrain for general information management and my “commonplace” book, because I keep a version on my MacBook and can sync my databases easily.
- Zoot for capturing bits of information that crop up all day long (phone numbers, registrations, etc.), also makes for a good tool for tracking purchases (which I have to make frequently for my job).
- Noteliner for outlining, brainstorming.
- OneNote, which is a bit redundant to PersonalBrain, but I find that OneNote is great for some things PB is not good at and vice versa.
- NoteTab for writing
- Currently exploring the idea of shifting information from Zoot to ConnectedText

Personal (Mac):
- PersonalBrain (see above)
- Tinderbox for creativity, analysis
- DevonThink for random bits of information (registrations)
- Scrivener for writing longer pieces
- DayOne for snippet journaling
- MacJournal for full journaling, one-up writing

Steve Z.

Posted by PIMfan
Sep 24, 2011 at 09:20 PM

The corporate world I work in requires Outlook, so all of my email and calendaring is done in Outlook 2007.

Earlier in the year, I took a stab at trying to put my world into Emacs org mode, but wasn’t able to really get it integrated into my personal information workflow. I have since regained feeling in my left pinky :-)

They keystone event for me this year was getting involved in the Zoot 6 beta/RC. Zoot 6 (aka Zoot XT) brings power and flexibility (albeit with some complexity) that I haven’t had since my Ecco days. I have great admiration for InfoQube, but could never really get my head completely around it.

After using the beta for several months, I recently purchased Zoot 6 and have been using it daily since June for the following activities:

- Free form note-taking
- Web page capture
- Task tracking and to-do lists
- Contact management
- Journaling

So much capability in Zoot 6, and I’m really enjoying the “discovery process” around using/leveraging it - necessary since the documentation isn’t yet ready! Being the CRIMPingly-sick info tool addict I am, I should not be surprised… lol….At this point, it’s looking like my traction with Zoot will be long term.

The other tool in my roll-call is ConnectedText. I haven’t upgraded to v5 yet, and my usage of it is primarily just for knowledge management via it’s basic wiki capabilities. I’m not a coder and just use the most basic of ConnectedText features, but it another application I admire for all the power it offers. It’s another one of those rare tools that I categorize as only limited by the amount of time I am able to spend learning it.

PIMfan

Posted by Zman
Sep 24, 2011 at 11:36 PM

Info Management Tools:
Using Now:
PersonalBrain 6 - primary tool (I’m writing this note in PB now)
Topicscape Pro - secondary - good for capturing data but a bit cumbersome
Zoot 6 - I have been using since 4. Love it still for archiving email, tracking recent web page surfing (this is a great and somewhat unique feature, RSS feeds, and the Safe
Evernote - for all the random stuff ad for things I want to synch

Backburner:
InfoQube - I used this last year estensively for a project and I liked the way it reminded me of ECCO, but not using it much at the moment
Surfulator - have it and use but not much recently
UltraRecall- ditto

—————————————-
Thinking and Outlining:
Using Now:?
ConnectedText (just upgraded to 5) - primary tool - reminds me of Transtext
Noteliner -good all around tool I use for todo lists, on the fly notes, quick proto-text workup
Writing Outliner - nice tool that plays well with MS Word 2010 and its new and pretty good embedded outlining capabilities (you can’t escape MS Word for corporate work)
Mindsystems Amode - like it but it has some bothers - but it works well on my Tablet PC for note taking

Back burner:
Everything - you name it, I have probably used it at some point and it may be on my machine now - trying to whittle the “current” list down to just a few

—————————————————————————
Email: corporate work and personal email
Current: Oultlook 2010
SharePoint?

Back Burner:
Everdesk - loved it but no current development and lacks full integration

———————————————-
Information Visualization and Brainstorming:
Current:
Flying Toaster (still on version 1)
Visio (work related Sys Eng and data driven diagraming)
VUE

Backburner:
Lots of stuff - including lots of academic and open source software

—————————————
Research collection:
Current:
Citavi

Backburner:
IdeaMason

——————————————-
Other Necessary Tools
MS Project
MS Excel (the true king of all tools)
MS PowerPoint - the necessary evil
Copernic Desktop and Agent
————————————————————-
Some stuff I’m playing with:
Komodo Edit
Goalscape
SouthBeach modeller

——————————————————
Mac stuff - I gave my Macbook pro to my wife, but may go back at some point - favorites there were:
NEO outliner (TAO)
Omnigraffle
DevonThink PRO
Tinderbox
Papers

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