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For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"
tomos:
For such data management..., I would think an outliner-type program would be best. The one I presently view as top pick is Scrivener:
Followed by TreeLine
If you know of any better, please speak up.-nkormanik (February 10, 2014, 08:44 PM)
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I think this is going to be based on personal preference, and work methods, and of course what you need/want to do.
I'd say give whatever you want to use a test run. Try importing as Tao suggests. Try organising and maybe exporting (I know exporting is one of Scrivener's big strengths).
I use InfoQube myself -
advantages of being extremely customisable in terms of how you view and organise your content. Entries can be related to multiple other entries; can also be shown in multiple grids/views, and multiple times within a hierarchy.
Also, has a universal clipper where you can dictate which 'fields' are filled for this entry, thereby also allowing them to be shown in different grids/views. (Or you can copy to an inbox grid, and sort later.) See shot below.
Possible disadvantages being:
it is in beta (is very stable; is in active development - to me this is a plus)
has very advanced filtering of items/entries, but this currently requires understanding 'SQL speak'
Tagging not really implemented, but there are easy ways around this
May need more setup/learn time than Tao's or your suggestions (not sure here though)
Universal Clipper:
For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"
dr_andus:
Skwire has built into Clipboard Trap the option of using a customizable 'delimiter', which separates snippets of text. For that delimiter I use "=====" plus linefeeds above and below. The delimiter could be used to automatically break apart the snippets when, say, importing the text files into a data management program.
Skwire, do you know of a program, or have you already written one, that can import delimited Clipboard Trap text files? What would you suggest?
-nkormanik (February 10, 2014, 08:44 PM)
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ConnectedText, which is a desktop wiki, has such an import function (it calls the 'delimiter' a 'separator'). It also has its own "clipboard catcher", so it can paste text directly into an open "topic" (CT document).
Advantages of CT are that it's a non-hierarchical system and it has a variety of annotating/categorising features and powerful search options, so it's suitable database for a very large number of topics (tens of thousands), which might be challenging to manage in a traditional hierarchical tree-based folder structure.
The main downside is that there is a fairly steep learning curve associated with it (unless one already knows about wiki markup and has an engineer's or programmer's type of mind - as opposed to being a 'poet' ;)).
rjbull:
TaoPhoenix, does MyInfo have hotkeys for adding Web pages and parts of Web pages, like RightNote does, or is it whole-page and mouse only? Also, does it have a Merge feature, something I found useful with EverNote 2.2 (the old desktop app) for combining sections of Web pages?
-rjbull (February 10, 2014, 04:07 PM)
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You know you just posted a triple barreled question, didn't you? Didn't you? In a thread, asking about ... subtopics? -TaoPhoenix (February 10, 2014, 07:51 PM)
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:o I wasn't clear enough. I'm less interested in a note organizer than in a note keeper, something to replace EverNote 2.2 but that is likely to have a future, with particular reference to capturing, storing and finding information from the Web. EverNote and CintaNotes are particularly convenient for that. Here's a screenshot of the capture hotkeys I have set in RN to help clarify what I mean:
For Serious Research: Cadillac of "ClipBoard Managers" vs. "Info/Data Manager"
the point being that you can clip a whole web page, clip part of a web page to a new clip, and clip part of a page to the current clip, all with RN minimised. No constant back-and-forth shuffle of Alt+Tab, find note, Ctrl+V etc. I must admit I can't get some of these RN hotkeys to work properly, or at least not the way I expected, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at. As for Merge, that's probably only really relevant to EverNote, CintaNotes and the like, i.e. single-pane + notes-list note keepers. In their case, you can accumulate multiple part-page clips, go to the notes list, mark the ones you want, and merge those into a single note.
TaoPhoenix:
...
I'm less interested in a note organizer than in a note keeper, ... with particular reference to capturing, storing and finding information from the Web. ... Here's a screenshot of the capture hotkeys I have set in RN to help clarify what I mean: (see attachment in previous post)the point being that you can clip a whole web page, clip part of a web page to a new clip, and clip part of a page to the current clip, all with RN minimised. No constant back-and-forth shuffle of Alt+Tab, find note, Ctrl+V etc.
-rjbull (February 12, 2014, 02:29 PM)
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Hmm. I think Tomos nailed my take on the discussion:
I think this is going to be based on personal preference, and work methods, and of course what you need/want to do.
-tomos (February 11, 2014, 06:20 AM)
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Sounds like you and I have different work styles etc. (And this is open to anyone else etc!) To open with, there's No Alt-Tab because I despise Full Screens for anything but movies in words that Renegade is most likely to use! ;D I became a convert to big widescreens one day on a lark at my old job I bought my own monitor after the usual pennywise-poundbitching typical nonsense, and I'll never go back.
So I put my data program on the left, and my info sources on the right, staggered to show any two at a time with a tiny clickable corner for #3 4 and 5. I will admit that Control C takes a step, but then where does it go? How do you keep your notes?
I keep 3.5 sets of notes with 4 totally different styles and "solutions".
A. Paper Stickies & text files
At my tax office, "topics" appear on the fly at lightning speed, so I churn through mad numbers of paper stickies just to get a key phrase down out of my head. Shades of GTD and all that. Then later I pencil recopy a more considered version of them in a couple of notebooks. If it looks like a real mess, I bang out a text file, especially when it's tax client notes so I can give them a copy and file a copy as well as just look at it etc.
B. Web Notes.
Why even use a program at all for raw ephemeral notes!? I just save web pages into a month-labeled folder because that's a brief interest in some random topic that I prob won't really care about again, until it's much later. Just for ease on the eyes, I split them a bit into sets. Then every couple of months I just move it all to long term storage and start over.
C. Important Topics
I have a few things like health care and tax law (I am currently a tax preparer) saved in permanently visible folders on my computer desktop. Then I create horozontal chains of files up to about 12 wide and sometimes down a vertical level to indicate processing vs to-do status. So it's a visual version of GTD that to me feels much faster on certain types of things. One passing small weakness of GTD is that the "status of items" part tends to be ephemeral info that's useful until it's done, then no one cares, *if you are not in a Compliance Environment*. (That's important, and getting off topic.)
Whew! So those are the preliminaries.
D. The last category is the big one. When a holistic chunk of info blows out my internal fuse from the sticky system, then I have to use the structured note program. So it's def about keeping notes! But at that level, for me at least I have to have structure! So rather than trying to make the capture part as fast as possible, "the structure IS the note". This week my own personal info "blew my fuse". So I made a cute little new personal note set. It came out so far at 15 topics and 5-8 subnotes per topic!!
:o
So at that level, minor steps like a mouse click or two are peanuts vs the overall goal of organizing the info.
Thoughts?
--Tao
TaoPhoenix:
May need more setup/learn time than Tao's or your suggestions (not sure here though)
-tomos (February 11, 2014, 06:20 AM)
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I'll completely confirm this. InfoQube needs *way more* time than MyInfo, so we have a total user-experience issue going on. It will heavily depend on what "needs to be done".
I'll describe my "fav" vs Tomos' "fav".
My use case is "1. Get info. 2. Structure it. 3. Refer to it or expand it." But nothing else "fancy" happens to it. The "brain" tells you where to look for something, and then you look at your notes. At that level, MyInfo is wonderfully easy to use. Start a file, leave two top headers blank just as the insider tip, then once you get going just create nodes and subnodes and start pounding info in. Occasionally fix the structure. But nothing fancy has to happen to the info.
InfoQube looks like it has tools to do amazing things. But I have NO IDEA what to do with it straight up.
So the learning curve is absolutely there.
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