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NoteFrog Pro (clipboard information manager) - Mini-Review
oblivion:
Only just found this thread, or I'd have stuck my oar in before...
I played with NoteFrog for a while some months back -- Berry might remember my TechSupportAlert email address -- and came, slightly regretfully, to the conclusion that it wasn't going to work for me in its current form and I gave up.
But I really wanted to like it.
So... @berry, if you remember the email exchange I had with you back in April last year, I'd be interested to know if you've moved NF in directions that might mean it works better for me. In particular, tag management in a way more like that used by CintaNotes and easier reminders...
I'm currently using AllMyNotes coupled with CHS for this sort of stuff but AMN's insistence on a tree structure is beginning to be problematic for me, and its programmers are clearly far more mouse-oriented than keyboard -- which is also less than ideal. NF's idiosyncracies a year ago finally persuaded me that it wasn't yet ready to take over the contents of my brain in a way that I could work with, but (and you may recall I offered this at the end of our last exchange) I'd be completely happy to play with beta versions if you want another tester. :)
berry:
Hi Tim,
Yes, I remember our exchange. And, unfortunately, there is no "calendar view" in V2. It could be accomplished via "tags" within the notes, but it would need to be via a free-form method developed by you to your liking - e.g. a tag in the note 2011/01/13 etc. All January items could easily be found via a 2011/01 search. I imagine you could find an even more creative way to tag your notes to meet your specifications. That's part of the beauty of a totally free-form database. We don't lock you into our expectations about what's best or right.
That said, future releases of V2 will introduce a searchable, free form tagging capability outside the note itself so you can have distinct tags that are not contained within the note. The capability is not in the base v2, but will be implemented in a future v2 release.
Assuming your email address is the same as before, I'll send you a link to a beta download shortly. Based on results so far, it should be pretty close to a pre-release version.
cheers,
berry
01/20/2012
oblivion:
And, unfortunately, there is no "calendar view" in V2.
-berry (January 20, 2012, 04:35 PM)
--- End quote ---
I don't even remember asking for that! Might be because I was looking for something more like ePIM than how my modus operandi has settled into now...
That said, future releases of V2 will introduce a searchable, free form tagging capability outside the note itself so you can have distinct tags that are not contained within the note. The capability is not in the base v2, but will be implemented in a future v2 release.
--- End quote ---
Now that IS something that will enhance the product.
Assuming your email address is the same as before, I'll send you a link to a beta download shortly. Based on results so far, it should be pretty close to a pre-release version.
--- End quote ---
Received with thanks.
Initial discoveries: the idiosyncratic interface that I remember from last try is almost gone, and (I'm afraid) I think that's probably all to the good. Good or bad, most people expect to find things that (interface-wise) behave like most other things, and I'm no different from anyone else in that if I can avoid reading tracts of documentation before making any use of a given program, then I will. The FAQ bit presents an I-beam rather than a pointer and still looks like the previous version, which probably needs a look. Also, there's a missing tooltip on the help, tools and utilities toolbar button.
I'm currently running it on my netbook, which is a (Win7Starter) 1024x600 screen. The above help toolbar button opens a window that will fit onscreen but starts in such a way that the bottom of the window is offscreen. If I move it up so I can see it all, it doesn't remember where I moved it to because next time I open it, I have to move it again.
More seriously, in an attempt to give it a quantity of data to chew on, I switched on automatic capture and spent a while copying data out of my AllMyNotes junkpile.
I don't like the popup "comunication (sic)" window that says what it's found, whether it's a dupe or not and that it's being added (or not.) It's intrusive, its options aren't obvious or even obviously necessary (Copy and clear -- I can see and understand what they do but where's the "Don't notify me again" checkbox?) and it's just not what I expected to happen.
At this point, I wanted to create a note inside of NF to store my notes about its behaviour. Insert item? Can't find it. Why not?
[Later] because it's only a toolbar icon. I can't right-click in the stack or pick an option off the Item menu, both of which were the things I expected to work.]
Then I started getting clipboard errors being reported by NF when I hit ^C in AMN.
Now I get more clipboard errors than not. "Unable to access Windows clipboard. Some program must have it locked." If I try again a few seconds later, it often works but this behaviour, once started, just gets more and more frequent. It doesn't make a difference if I'm running CHS or not -- which I thought might be the problem -- and the NF "reestablish clipboard chain" option doesn't help either, so it's not that sort of an issue. Background data handling running slower than it needs to given the number of incoming data items, maybe?
I saw the issue created by CHS too -- NF and CHS clearly can't comfortably coexist, which is a shame.
There's an issue with the search: I added something via the clipboard that included the term "NoteFrog" then switched to NF and searched for it (this was because I couldn't work out how to add an item inside of NF directly) and only got the "use it or lose it" default initial entry. It might well be because indexing hadn't caught up yet but I feel there should be some sort of suggestion that search results may not be accurate if the indexing process is currently busy...
I think I'd like some sort of import feature too. If only because migrating from another datastore an item at a time isn't pain-free... :)
...I bet you wish I hadn't got involved, now... ;)
berry:
In the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, "Sorry about that".
Not too long after I sent you the link, I realized I had upped the wrong version - my own debug version rather than the fixed executable. You must have gotten it before I corrected the upload.
I can understand your frustrations. NoteFrog and CHS should co-exist.
Try downloading again?
Or if you prefer, just download NoteFrog.exe from the same location and replace your existing exe.
There is a raw text input capability under the "Stack" menu - "Import all text items from a directory.."
I've also set up a forum for discussion http://notefrog.com/forum - you will need to register, too much spam otherwise.
cheers - and thanks
oblivion:
In the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, "Sorry about that".
-berry (January 21, 2012, 02:18 PM)
--- End quote ---
Forgiven. :)
Try downloading again?
--- End quote ---
Will do.
There is a raw text input capability under the "Stack" menu - "Import all text items from a directory.."
--- End quote ---
I think it would be better if you could import from a single file with some sort of delimiter to separate items. If I were to try to make individual text files for the stuff I've imported, it'd have been a longer process than an item at a time via the clipboard. (I shall assume that that would have worked, with the right version, a good deal more smoothly than it actually did!)
I suspect many junkpile-organiser-type programs would be able to squirt out their contents as a textfile with optionally some sort of separater between them -- although I can't say I've researched the subject, it just strikes me as sensible -- which would give you an import route at least for plaintext, as long as you could specify the delimiter...
I've also set up a forum for discussion http://notefrog.com/forum - you will need to register, too much spam otherwise.
--- End quote ---
Registered. Not yet confirmed, but I'll do that next...
Your captcha is very hard even for real people. :)
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