DonationCoder.com Software > N.A.N.Y. 2015

NANY 2015 Pledge - Some Kind of Unique Productivity Tool

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mouser:
I am always fascinated by new productivity utilities and ideas, and I'd like to create another one for this year's NANY 2015.

I was actually thinking of making a kind of lean and mean utility Digital Index Card Notes system, that would compliment the index-card system I have been using to keep track of todo items and ideas for many years now.
You can read about my real-world non-digital index card system here, and a brief old discussion of some ideas for a digital version here.

My current best idea is not to try to replicate visually the idea of physical index cards that you can shuffle around on screen, but rather to provide a database-driven system for creating "virtual" cards (i.e. small entries with title and text), with some keywords/group identification, with good fast search/sort/filtering, and then provide functionality for PRINTING such cards on index-card stock.

So it wouldn't be a replacement for having a physical collection of index cards, but a supplemental tool to help you create, print, and search them.

Alternatively, one could imagine the utility as a more general purpose tool for maintaining a lean and mean database of entries that you want to print out on card stock (of whatever size); so think flash cards, etc.


Just my current idea, can't guarantee it will be the one i finally end up with.

Another related alternative would be not to print the entries on index card stock, but perhaps to assist in printing a daily TODO list from selected entries, or something similar.

mouser:
I'm happy to hear suggestions, alternatives, etc.

TaoPhoenix:
Hi Mouser!

Just as a "devil's advocate brainstorming exercise", it sounds to me like your big competition is the Stickies type programs. To me a bad weakness of index card only size is once you get a tad above that size frame, you are stuck. Stickies can print on whatever size paper your printer can handle.

So for example, since the "search" was something I never do, I just checked. Let's consider Tom Revell's Stickies.

R-Click the small tray icon/manage stickies, then
Tools/find

... finds them by title.

Then for printing,
R-Click/Print, then
Properties/Paper Size and choose 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 or whatever your size is.

or whatever, because once you get into the print menu, it seems to be local firmware that changes a little.

Meanwhile, there's 3.5 levels of urgency. Use a desktop splitter like the one I use from the obscure non-Nany C contest here, Trandesk. You open Stickies on the 4th tab, with any one open, minimized, or long-term-closed as you like. Then splits 2 and 3 hold working projects, with their sets of stickies open or minimized. You save your last tab for the rest of your faster disposable stuff.

So put another way, a problem I see that you have to find a clever UI for, is "overloading" your app. Once you get more than about 20 index cards going, how do you deal with them?

dr_andus:
it sounds to me like your big competition is the Stickies type programs.-TaoPhoenix (October 08, 2014, 06:27 AM)
--- End quote ---

To me WorkFlowy came to mind (and other similar cross-platform to-do/outliner apps), which enables me to do exactly what Mouser does with his physical system or what the new software aims to be able to do (minus the index card printing). So my question would be, how would this new software be different from WorkFlowy? The printing feature could be one (though personally I wouldn't have a use for that).

Once you get more than about 20 index cards going, how do you deal with them?
-TaoPhoenix (October 08, 2014, 06:27 AM)
--- End quote ---

The answer to that would have to be a decent exporting function, so stuff could be moved to a specialist database that can handle masses of data. Again, WorkFlowy can export as formatted text, plain text, and OPML.

anandcoral:
As an idea, I use http://www.resoph.com/ ResophNotes, with http://simplenote.com/ Simplenote integration. I save files in txt format, so that I can have my data back, even if any one of the above does not work, for some reason.

It has good search and tagging options.

Regards,

Anand

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