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For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"

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nkormanik:
Thanks Dr_Andus.  Great explanation.

TaoPhoenix likes MyInfo ($49, pro-$99).  What other programs have you, and others, found worthy of holding your vast and growing supply of information?

Is this sort of program beyond what we might hope for on donationcoder.com?

Dr_Andus says "if you want to work ... on an on-going basis dynamically (e.g. by constantly analysing, re-organising and synthesising)...."  I'm very interested in this process.  Can it be further explained some?

dr_andus:
Tomos is probably right in that it also depends on the nature of the data being organised. The tree-like hierarchy clearly works for TaoPhoenix and many other people, otherwise hierarchical software like UltraRecall, RightNote, MyInfo etc. wouldn't be around.

The scenarios I'm talking about have to do with organising a large number of small chunks of text (with occasional images or links to other files and websites), such as a database of quotes and reading notes that one collects over a lifetime. In that situation it is not all that useful to organise these items into trees at the time of collecting or creating them because they are being gathered for later consumption, where they may be re-used for different purposes. It would be more important to label/categorise them, so that they would turn up in relevant searches.

The method I'm using is called the Zettelkasten (slip box) method, developed initially by a sociologist called Niklas Luhmann. If you do a search for it, you can find sites that explain it.

One category of software to implement this system are personal/desktop wikis. I use ConnectedText, but as I said, it's got a steep learning curve, it took me several tries over several years to finally start using it. Zim is another one.

There are some cross-over software that try to combine the tree with a wiki. E.g. Wikidpad, Whizfolders, or Outwiker.

There is also Luedecke's Zettelkasten software.

Piggydb is another interesting approach.

Is this sort of program beyond what we might hope for on donationcoder.com?
--- End quote ---

Not necessarily. There are some very simple implementations of the Zettelkasten out there, such as using nvALT on Mac or ResophNotes on Windows. Apparently it's even possible to create a desktop wiki using AutoHotkey.

TaoPhoenix:
TaoPhoenix likes MyInfo ($49, pro-$99).  What other programs have you, and others, found worthy of holding your vast and growing supply of information?

Is this sort of program beyond what we might hope for on donationcoder.com?
-nkormanik (February 15, 2014, 05:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

Hi Nick.

On this "other topic" a while back I investigated the idea of "Coding Snacks" and "Coding Lunches" and even "Coding Dinners". DC's special niche is that for other people you can usually get a "snack", which is a cute little low level program to do one super-useful thing that you cannot program yourself. One of my favorite examples is the TranDesk desktop Splitter that allows you to force WinXP / other into multiple desktops. Or MilesAhead's BBSS that lets you save the URLs of a bunch of Firefox tabs into a text file. (Somewhere else I swear I saw the other half that lets you load them all back in again.)

The problem is there is a gap in the middle I call "Coding Lunch". Most of the quality well done "NANY" apps are people's labor of love, so maybe you can sneak a small feature in, but otherwise they either work for you or not. It's a bit tricky to get people to make you a medium app here. I've tried.

I do have to say that even leaving off the fancy stuff, I thoroughly respect the backend problems of an info manager program. MyInfo was one of actually TWO programs with the killer feature I wanted - a beautiful Web export. Last year my recommendation would have been the other one. But that one somehow decayed with a deadly core level structural integrity data destroying problem, and I had to let it go.

I totally get how adding features is Additive and support is Cube-Exponential.

Does that help?

Attronarch:
The method I'm using is called the Zettelkasten (slip box) method, developed initially by a sociologist called Niklas Luhmann. If you do a search for it, you can find sites that explain it.
-dr_andus (February 16, 2014, 04:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

Looks like an interesting system, especially for complex issues, scientific books, and journal articles. Could you recommend some readings on the topic?

dr_andus:
Looks like an interesting system, especially for complex issues, scientific books, and journal articles. Could you recommend some readings on the topic?
-Attronarch (February 16, 2014, 03:59 PM)
--- End quote ---

It was this article by Manfred Kuehn that got me started: Some Idiosyncratic Reflections on Note-Taking in General
and ConnectedText in Particular

He blogs frequently about Zettelkasten.

Christian Tietze's blog posts on the matter are also helpful.

And here is the original Luhmann article: Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account

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