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1326

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 11, 2008, 04:59 PM »

Even the pictures' names are not indexed???

1327

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 11, 2008, 04:49 PM »

So, vevola...? 

1328

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by Armando on March 11, 2008, 04:45 PM »

Exactly. So there are no easy solutions for those who want to combine NOD32 v3 and another firewall than ESET's.

1329

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 10, 2008, 07:23 PM »

PS This is the way to fly... I decided to update the E-mail index mentioned above with Outlook shutdown and it took 17 seconds.

-Darwin (March 10, 2008, 06:01 PM)

Nice. I'll do that too.

Odd. I can't make this work, Armando - in either dtSearch or Archivarius.

-Darwin (March 10, 2008, 03:43 PM)

Open one of your pictures with a text editor -- like Notepad++ -- and look for the metadata info at the beginning of the file; then look for the string with Archivarius. OR find a picture with archivarius, and at the bottom of the viewing pane choose "text" instead of "image". You'll see the available metadata available for the image (well laid out too). Then, redo a search with one of the metadata string. I love it!

I'm using Archivarius v4.

1330

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 10, 2008, 12:12 PM »

BTW, Darwin and others using Archivarius : I just noticed that Archivarius searches an finds metadata very well!
I searched for  Find and Run Robot, looking for something I wrote a while ago, and saw 15 screenshots of farr in the result pane (and archivarius showed the images, of course). None of them had "Find and Run Robot" in their name nor their containing folders, etc. But they did have some EXIF or other info somewhere in the file (taken with screenshotcaptor)... X1 doesn't do that. (but maybe dtsearch does...  )

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 10, 2008, 11:04 AM »

Babis : thanks for your comments.

But, it's been a while... It might have improved.

-Armando (March 09, 2008, 06:59 PM)

But I stand behind what I said nevertheless. At the time, I made some fairly precise (personal) comparisons. I'd have to do it again and I don't have the time right now.

If I have the time I'll update my comments.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 10:35 PM »

Thanks Darwin. Always interesting to see how are these Desktop Search tools work for others in specific contexts.

1333

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 07:02 PM »

1) Include a license inside the shrink wrapped product that you have to agree to BEFORE opening the package (MS and Adobe figure largely here)

2) People who design installers that only unpack the installation instructions so that you can read them after installing the product (almost all shareware and freeware seems to fall into this category)

-Carol Haynes (March 09, 2008, 06:58 PM)

 

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 06:59 PM »

IIRC  :

- a bit more difficult to find what I was looking for -- - couldn't enter search queries as quickly
- not as quick as archivarius, copernic or X1
- not as accurate
- Index was taking a lot of space,
- RAM hungry

But, it's been a while... It might have improved.
I also had a bit less RAM back then, so that was an issue.

1335

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 05:09 PM »

OK... Like I said PPLandry (Pierre) is the expert. And he'd probably get you to where you want in no time. But I can try to give it a shot since Pierre might be taking his Sunday off  .

Say I have my biblio entries exported from a third party program as a text or comma separated file, how might I import it here so as to already start taking notes

-vevola (March 09, 2008, 03:19 PM)

This shouldn't be too complicated, unless you already some long notes in your CSV file that include some carriage return.

So... let's try anyways. There are 4 steps (it looks complicated but it isn't. It,s just long to write everything down since I don't know how knowledgeable you are with computers!) :



1) First, I suggest you look at the fields available in SQLNotes and create some extra ones


  1- Go to the "View" Menu ---> "Manage fields".

     - You'll see all the default fields. (You can create as many others as you want.) See if there are some fields there that you could already use. For instance, the "item" field could be used for the title of the book or the author, or... something else. I suggest the title of the book, since there are usually no 2 identical titles, but many books per author.

     2 - Now you'll create the ones you need for your export to work well : Author, Date, Publisher, etc.  You'll need all these fields to be able to export your data somewhere :

        --> Click on the "New" button
        --> Give the field a name
        --> repeat... 


That's it for now. (Eventually, you could customize all the fields properties)


2) IMPORT your data


  1- Go to the "File" menu --> Import --> Import Data

     Leave the settings as they are since you have a comma separated file.

     If the first row of your comma separated file contains the fields names (ie : author, title, ...), leave the corresponding box checked. (You could open your CSV file in a text editor to check that)

     Now :
 
  2- Click on "Open File"

  3- Find your CSV file

  4- Open it : You should now see SOME (if not all -- default is 100) of your references in the import window.

  5- Click "next"

Now... In the top window you'll see all the data you're trying to import AND in the bottom part, how you'll map the different fields : Import fields are the one you're trying to import, and current fields are the one they will be imported into!

    6- make sure you select one current fields (from the fields you created earlier OR default ones) for each field you're trying to import. use the little drop down menus in each text box -- or just type and it will show you what's available.


   7- Once that is done, click "next" : you'll see all your references that are going to be imported

   8- Click on "IMPORT".

That's it for the importing part. 


3) ****Set up a grid to see your data.****


(NB : Even if you can't see your data, it's there. You need to set a grid to be able to see it. Grids are like different views on your data. Your data doesn't belong to any grid per se, but can be seen through them.)

There are at least 2 ways to do that. Here's one :

  1- Grid Menu --> "Properties"

OR

    - In the Grid list, at the bottom : Click on "New View", type the name of a field you created

  2- In the Right part of the window, in the "data" section --> define the Grid's "source" (the field all the items in the grid will have in common)... Maybe will it be "title" or something like that : choose a field that you created ANS that'll be shared by ALL your references. You can change it later anyways.

  3- Click SAVE.

That's it.


4) Now open your grid and display your data

2 simple ways :

  1- click on the your new Grid Button (with the name you chose), on the grid button bar (you should see these grids on it too : Welcome, appointments...)

  2- Or click on the "view" menu --> Grids --> click on your grid name.


  3- Now, you might want to display more columns/fields (fields are displayed in columns)  :

     - you can right-click on one of the column's header and select "displayed columns",
     OR
     - left click on the "Grid" menu and select "displayed columns". Whatever you prefer! "Check" the fields/columns you want do display in your grid.


NB : You don't have to display ALL the filled fields in your grid. There's a property pane (press F4 or shift+f4) that shows everything you always wanted to ask about items (ie : your references in that case) but were afraid to ask! You can position your panels wherever you want by dragging them around (click and drag with their title bar), and fix their position or auto-hide them --> use the little "pin" icon on their title bar. (there are several different panes --> ie : HTML, properties, manage forms; look in the "view" menu)

Voilà ! Congratulations, you created your first grid and imported your first references. 


I'm sure you'll have other questions after that. 

I suggest you also have a look at this Guide

Would there be a possibility of someone helping me set up a template for research note-taking?

-vevola (March 09, 2008, 03:14 PM)

that should be possible too. But Pierre will be better at this one.

- A main level BIBLIO entry (book, journal, article, etc), with all the biblio info linked to it.

- "Notes/comments" items which also has a title (brief summary of note item). Bear in mind that they need to be linked somehow (automatically) to the main level BIBLIO entry and there should be the possibility of adding the page number. Especially if it becomes possible to export to MSWord (and similar) - here what would need to be exported are: a) the note (item content) b) some meta info (customizable?) and c) the AUTHOR, YEAR and PAGE#.
Plus tagging for items for quick search and cross-referencing.

-vevola (March 09, 2008, 03:14 PM)

Again... Pierre.

Didn't find the screen cast. At a first glance this looks very nice, but for someone not used to DBs like myself, I'm having problems setting it up.

-vevola (March 09, 2008, 03:14 PM)

Well, it's not exactly a screencast but a little flash presentation at the bottom of http://www.sqlnotes.net/.

There was also a little screencast but I can't find it now. I'll look for it.

1336

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 03:17 PM »

Do Yyu mean a template for SQL-notes?

1337

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 02:50 PM »

(edited previous post -- made it more understandable  )

1338

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 02:47 PM »

I found IdeaMason a bit sluggish and limited, not flexible enough for my needs. I pretty much expressed my conclusions in a post I made today. You'll see that I'm not alone in finding IdeaMason a bit restrictive. But you could try it and see for yourself. Some find it perfect for their needs.

I, of course, suggest that you ALSO have a look at SQL-Notes, AND contact PPLandry for help if you need any (I'm available too, but I'm not the developer and my knowledge is much more limited). He's a very very nice guy and will probably get you what you need in a very reasonable amount of time.

For some SQL-Notes screenshots, flash presentation, examples, help, forum, etc. : http://www.sqlnotes.net/ .

Keep in mind : SQLNotes can be as complex/simple as you want. YOU decide. Still in beta, but already more usefull than most PIMs and note takers out there.

PS : If you already possess Endnote or some similar reference solution, all you need is something flexible enough to structure your ideas. And, like I said in the other thread, it's very possible that the fact that MS Word will be integrated in SQL-Notes in about a week or two, that some of it's referencing plug-ins will too (I don't see why not! Pierre... if you read that ).

1339

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 02:29 PM »

Hope your hypothesis is correct (assume you meant "combining MS Word and SQLNotes...")

-Darwin (March 09, 2008, 02:26 PM)

Thanks for your keenness. I've corrected my mistake!

1340

General Software Discussion / Re: Ideamason on special

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 02:19 PM »

I'm minutes away from giving up on IdeaMason. As noted by others in this thread, it's quite inflexible and, as far as formatting features go, it's very limited. I am going back to my roots - Word and Endnote and done with it! This obsession with software driven "solutions" to everything is costing me my PhD! Time to rein the obsession in and re-focus my energies. If I am doing things "right" my participation here will be curtailed as well...

-Darwin (March 09, 2008, 01:02 PM)

That's what I ended up doing in June 2007 : MS word (can't go wrong with it -- but if that's not good enough, there's oo.org and textmaker ), endnote, X1+Archivarius+farr, EverNote** for quick ideas or clips, AND a good naming scheme (all important metadata in the filename, no more complex directory structures, no more tagging software).

** I don't use EverNote anymore, I've switched to SQL-Notes. Still in beta, but with more possibilities and with a developer that's willing to make it HAPPEN... The imminent MS word integration (which will replace the actual HTML pane - around March 15) will probably allow one to do almost everything IdeaMason can't, and more, MUCH more (it'll take a bit of configuration work of course; but once that will be done...). Hypothesis : combining MS Word and IdeaMason SQLNOTES probably means that Endnote's MS Word plug in will work within SQL-Notes "MS Word Pane". Maybe.

PS : Darwin : my guess is that for all your scientific research and data, SQL-Notes database and infinite fields creation capability + formulas and scripting, would be much more efficient than ideamason or even OneNote and it's "obscure" file format. SQL-Notes will be able to work with different database backend.

1341

General Software Discussion / Re: Version control on dual-boot system? (XP/Linux)

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 12:27 PM »

1000s of people are using ntfs-3g right now, without any problems. As for Performance, yes, I'm sure there's room for improvement, but it'S already pretty damn good AFAIC -- also  check the CPU column. But one can expect some performance gain in the near future since they clearly state that "ntfs-3g is NOT optimized yet".

1342

Post New Requests Here / Re: Willing to pay for a small code... $$$

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 11:13 AM »

I think SQLNotes would be great too, except for the citation part. (But, eventually, a solution could be found --> linking fields to the "conversion" web pages?? )
The good thing about SQLNotes is that it's VERY flexible and you can set it the way you like. Might seem a bit abstract at first, but it's just a matter of setting everything up and understanding the basic principles.

Eventually, there's also IdeaMason. It didn't work for me, but might for you...

1343

General Software Discussion / Re: Version control on dual-boot system? (XP/Linux)

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 10:45 AM »

You have to be careful with some file formats.

The only ones I have heard of problems with are MS proprietary formats (so probably would affect you) but back in the days of Office 2000 I read reports of file corruption when using the SAME (!!!) version of Office applications on different systems,

I can't imagine why that should happen but if you are editing the same file with different tools under different OSes there may be issues unless they are totally generic formats (such as JPEG).

-Carol Haynes (February 29, 2008, 10:31 AM)

I've never ever had problems...

You can store the documents on a subversion server not on your computer. For example, get a Dreamhost account and use the subversion server that comes with it. Another option is to make the data partition FAT32 and create the repo as a file-based repo (not DB-based) and both Linux and Windows svn clients should handle it just fine.

-tinjaw (February 29, 2008, 10:28 AM)

Maybe I'm missing something (quite possible) , but filesystem compatibility shouldn't be an issue anyways with ntfs-3g (usually installed by default on todays Linux systems) or ext2ifs that's very easy to set up on windows. I'd recommend using NTFS though, as I trust ntfs-3g more than ext2ifs (especially for the newer ext3 fs R/W)

1344

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 10:14 AM »

Bummed. My PST was initially indexed - from scratch - in about 2 hours (virus scan kicked in and slowed everything down). This compares favourably with my experience ten months ago when I first installed Archivarius and it took 34 hours to index my PST! That index was then updated in about 17 mintues. I decided to test this with version 4 and gave up at 26% indexed and 40 minutes of elapsed time 

-Darwin (March 09, 2008, 12:35 AM)

annoying... Was waiting impatiently for that update too.

1345

Living Room / Re: the award for most clueless pc user ever - my candidate.

« Last post by Armando on March 09, 2008, 10:06 AM »

or maybe the standard is quite simple. by default, icons require a double click and buttons/links require a single click.

-nudone (March 09, 2008, 07:45 AM)

Yeah, actually you're right
(still, the tray icons don't quite follow this rule, are a mix between icons and buttons )

-jgpaiva (March 09, 2008, 08:24 AM)

Double clicking vs single clicking is like learning French grammar or orthography --> all the exceptions don't make sense. Yes most computer illiterate double click everything, so they have it covered. If some stuff required three clicks, maybe they'd triple click everything?

1346

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by Armando on March 08, 2008, 01:11 PM »

There are still a couple of applications that don't work well with Comodo's firewall.  NOD32 in its current incarnation uses a proxy to filter all the web pages email through its on-access scanner.  That means that all the connections appear as originating from NOD32, so there is no firewall filtering of connections as a result.

-BinderDundat (March 07, 2008, 05:52 PM)

The NOD32 ekrn proxy doesn't just affect Comodo though.  There's been a lot of complaints about it rendering ANY firewall useless.

See: http://www.wildersse...wthread.php?t=192305

-taichimaster (March 08, 2008, 06:27 AM)

And that's why I'm keeping NOD32 v2.7

1347

General Software Discussion / Re: CCleaner 2.0 Beta Released - Clean the Crap off your Computer

« Last post by Armando on March 07, 2008, 06:46 PM »

However I have had to help people more than a few times who don’t really know much and presume that the default settings are safe. They are not safe in many instances. Someone who doesn’t know very well exactly what they want to clean can definitely get into trouble with it.

-J-Mac (March 07, 2008, 06:16 PM)

I agree. And the first thing that should be turned off by default, is anything concerning registry clean up.

1348

General Software Discussion / Re: Best free firewall for Windows?

« Last post by Armando on March 07, 2008, 05:59 PM »

apologies for resurrecting a dead thread, but it seems appropriate...

-Target (February 28, 2008, 12:58 AM)

No apologies, please!   
I personally love it when people resurrect dead threads when it's appropriate (and it is). Usually makes it easier to find info on a subject.

1349

Best Firewall / Re: How Does Your Firewall Rate? - Outpost, Comodo, Jetico, ...

« Last post by Armando on March 07, 2008, 01:31 AM »

I've been using Online Armor for a while now and love it -- fairly light, not buggy, no internet connection slowdowns. And rates really high on leak-tests scores. Sorry  .

If you take the time to do the "start up" configuration properly before running it for the first time, it should go very smoothly (it is possible to have some temporary freezes the first times, but this is only temporary as it will learn -- with your help! -- which programs are allowed to run/access the internet or not).

Currently running the free 2.1.0.95 version. 

1350

Official Announcements / Re: The site is now back online (March 6th, 2008)

« Last post by Armando on March 07, 2008, 01:10 AM »

It's been a long weeeeiiiird week... 
Thanks Gothic, Wordzilla, Mouser.