Recommendations for Personal Information Management software ...Experience with DoOrganizer?

W

Werdhi

Hi. I'm looking for good Personal Information Management software.
I need a strong package of features that will handle:

1. Basic document management (a la Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html or Treepad http://www.treepad.com/).
2. Detailed Calender/Task Information (a la MS Outlook or Calenderscope
http://www.calendarscope.com/) ... also a kind of Planner (big view of
ideas over large swaths of time)
3. Detailed Contact Information (a la MS Outlook)
4. A place to do *basic* free form brainstorming or "mind mapping" or
at least some kind of more dynamic linking of ideas (a la Concept Draw
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/main.php)
5. Some kind of journal capability, i.e., ideas tied to dates (a la The
Journal http://www.davidrm.com/)
6. Ability to export information in whole or part and also to filter
information exported to specific criteria.
7. Ability to search entire database.
8. Ability to dynamically link ideas/points in the database to each
other and to material outside the database (such as files on local drive
or to web addresses).

I know of a wide range of PIM programs such as those listed here:
http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/tools.asp and have checked many out.

The most outstanding I've seen is GemX's DoOrganizer
http://www.gemx.com/doorganizer.php (now at v 1.45 and previously known
as Deviant Organizer). It's a remarkable (non-freeware, however)
program but seems somewhat unstable with frequent Access Violations and
missing features (that are referenced in the documentation). I've seen
references (little is mentioned on the program on-line) to others with
freezes and access violation errors.

QUESTION: Does anyone know about this DoOrganizer program?

QUESTION: What PIM programs are people using and what do you find both
useful and limited about them?

BTW: Anyone know about the Chandler (Open Source) project run by Mitch
Kapor (of Lotus 1-2-3 fame)? Looks interesting but very slow in
development(compared to other programs out there).

Thanks All!

NOTE: Reposted from alt.comp.software.tools
 
M

Michael Laplante

Werdhi said:
Hi. I'm looking for good Personal Information Management software.
I need a strong package of features that will handle:
Click to expand...

<snip>

I don't have a recommendation -- more of a piece of advice. The problem with
finding a freeware -- and even shareware or commercial -- program that's too
feature-specific rich IME is the possibility of it being abandoned. That's
not an uncommon experience with freeware programs, particularly those
written by one individual. Periodically, you will see calls for help here
from people who have used program X with its proprietary format and then
discovered the program won't work with the latest OS. Or, it conflicts with
another program. Or, a new and better program has come along and they want
to somehow export their data to the new one, then find they can't.

You're better to find a simple program such as Treepad Lite, as an example,
and then figure a way to adapt it to your purposes. Then, if the program
becomes obsolete, your data is in some easily read format that can be
extracted. Alternately, find small proggies that do each of your individual
tasks then use some sort of "wrapper" freeware taskbar program to "unite"
them under one common interface. Otherwise, I would suggest your best bet is
commercial software where the possibility of the program being abandoned is
less remote.

My pair of pennies. . .

M
 
W

Won Dampchin

Michael said:
<snip>

I don't have a recommendation -- more of a piece of advice. The
problem with finding a freeware -- and even shareware or commercial
-- program that's too feature-specific rich IME is the possibility of
it being abandoned. That's not an uncommon experience with freeware
programs, particularly those written by one individual. Periodically,
you will see calls for help here from people who have used program X
with its proprietary format and then discovered the program won't
work with the latest OS. Or, it conflicts with another program. Or, a
new and better program has come along and they want to somehow export
their data to the new one, then find they can't.

You're better to find a simple program such as Treepad Lite, as an
example, and then figure a way to adapt it to your purposes. Then, if
the program becomes obsolete, your data is in some easily read format
that can be extracted. Alternately, find small proggies that do each
of your individual tasks then use some sort of "wrapper" freeware
taskbar program to "unite" them under one common interface.
Otherwise, I would suggest your best bet is commercial software where
the possibility of the program being abandoned is less remote.

My pair of pennies. . .

M
Click to expand...

IMHO ... take this advice! It will be hard to find another two pennies as
valuable as these.

Regards...
 
S

Sparky

Won said:
IMHO ... take this advice! It will be hard to find another two pennies as
valuable as these.

Regards...
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Sounds like paranoia <grin>. Just do due diligence and you
should be fine. I recommend you check out sourceforge.net. Ask
yourself these questions:

1) Does the "feature-rich" proggy export to vanilla formats (txt, csv, etc)
2) Is the source code freely available
3) How many iterations has the package gone through
4) How big is the dev team
5) How big is the user base

I got 5 good years outta VisiCalc before I had to export my sheets to
Lotus 1-2-3. Similarly, if OpenOffice were to die tomorrow, MS Orifice
(and others) could step in.

etc etc,
-Sparky
 
M

Mike Dee

I got 5 good years outta VisiCalc before I had to export my sheets
to Lotus 1-2-3. Similarly, if OpenOffice were to die tomorrow, MS
Orifice (and others) could step in.
Click to expand...

Crumbs. I recently DL'd "VC.COM"
<http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm> just to see what
it was about. Wow, have to say I am used to a GUI world. But I did
figure out how to exit from the program safely due to some
familiarity with a DOS CLI. Amazing thing is it still runs in a DOS
window under Win 98se, I guess even later.

BTW, I did transpose the VisiCalc "A Visible Calculator For the Apple
II REFERENCE CARD" to PDF if anyone wants a copy (7 pages with
illustrations, 179 KB).
 
C

cactus

Werdhi said:
Hi. I'm looking for good Personal Information Management software.
I need a strong package of features that will handle:

1. Basic document management (a la Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html or Treepad
http://www.treepad.com/).
2. Detailed Calender/Task Information (a la MS Outlook or Calenderscope
http://www.calendarscope.com/) ... also a kind of Planner (big view of
ideas over large swaths of time)
3. Detailed Contact Information (a la MS Outlook)
4. A place to do *basic* free form brainstorming or "mind mapping" or
at least some kind of more dynamic linking of ideas (a la Concept Draw
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/main.php)
5. Some kind of journal capability, i.e., ideas tied to dates (a la The
Journal http://www.davidrm.com/)
6. Ability to export information in whole or part and also to filter
information exported to specific criteria.
7. Ability to search entire database.
8. Ability to dynamically link ideas/points in the database to each
other and to material outside the database (such as files on local drive
or to web addresses).

I know of a wide range of PIM programs such as those listed here:
http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/tools.asp and have checked many out.

The most outstanding I've seen is GemX's DoOrganizer
http://www.gemx.com/doorganizer.php (now at v 1.45 and previously known
as Deviant Organizer). It's a remarkable (non-freeware, however)
program but seems somewhat unstable with frequent Access Violations and
missing features (that are referenced in the documentation). I've seen
references (little is mentioned on the program on-line) to others with
freezes and access violation errors.

QUESTION: Does anyone know about this DoOrganizer program?

QUESTION: What PIM programs are people using and what do you find both
useful and limited about them?

BTW: Anyone know about the Chandler (Open Source) project run by Mitch
Kapor (of Lotus 1-2-3 fame)? Looks interesting but very slow in
development(compared to other programs out there).

Thanks All!

NOTE: Reposted from alt.comp.software.tools
Click to expand...
The advice presented earlier is good - too fancy a program and will
eventually no longer be freeware. Another problem is that an
application that does many things probably won't do all of them well.
Also a if you lose the application, you've lost everything.

I would suggest that you use several applications and either use an
updater or export/import to synchronize.

For contacts, notes datebook, a freeware program that is unlikely to go
away is the Palm desktop, available from www.palmone.com.
You could also use Outlook...

The other functionality will be available elsewhere, easily and free.
 
W

Werdhi

Yes, I agree with all of you that:

1. It is important to consider the possibility of getting embedded in a
program that could then disappear. Even there is a big enough user
base, programs like EccoPro (which stopped development in 1997!) are
still in wide use and have a range of support possibilities through this
network even though the program is no longer developed (and so far as I
know, has not released the code for development). Open Source does have
the advantage (with a sufficient user base) that if it is good, the
program will probably keep going (although Keynote has been open and
doesn't appear to have been kept alive after 2003).

2. Related to above is the ability to get OUT of a program should one
need to as easily as possible.

3. It may not be wise to put all you eggs in one basket (and few
programs offer all the functionality you would need across all the areas
you want). That DoOrganizer is damn close for me (again, not freeware).
There is a great deal of incentive for me to use an all in one program
given the ability to dynamically link data within it that can't usually
be done across several programs.

That I've posted here is indication that I'm putting a good deal of
thought into this as I'm at a point where I would like to make the right
choice and hopefully not get too burned later ...

MS Outlook is certainly not going anywhere, but I'm disinclined to go
with it for a variety of reasons. I understand the compelling reason to
use it given that it is more or less ubiquitous.

Thanks! Any other thoughts?

Werdhi
 
J

Jeff Chapman

Hi Werdhi,

Well, you're certainly welcome to try orGenta! (LOL)

To be perfectly honest, it's not up to your demanding standards. It has a
small development staff (eh, me). And full functionality costs $10. But at
least I'm actively involved and interested in developing it, and at any rate
it won't kill you to try it. Here's the announcement I formerly posted on
the alt.shareware newsgroup:

Best regards,
Jeff

-----------------------

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of orGenta 1.0 --
software that provides advanced categorizing and organization features.

orGenta automatically categorizes sentences after you type them, parsing the
sentence and matching each word to categories that you establish. You may
establish categories before or after you enter text. Categories may be
nested into a treelike hierarchy.

orGenta also performs "smart date" recognition, accepting both explicit
dates and phrases such as "the first Monday in November".

orGenta is compatible with all desktop versions of Windows.

You may download a shareware version of orGenta from
http://home.earthlink.net/~jdc24/orGenta/orGentaHome.htm -- registered
customers can also access advanced printing and data export features.


------------ Original Message ------------
 
S

Susan Bugher

Sparky said:
Ask yourself these questions:

1) Does the "feature-rich" proggy export to vanilla formats (txt,
Click to expand...
csv, etc)

Agree. IMO *zillions* :) of person-hours are wasted by apps that use
proprietary formats and do not allow you to input or export data in
"standard" formats.

Susan
 
J

John Hood

Werdhi said:
Hi. I'm looking for good Personal Information Management software.
I need a strong package of features that will handle:

1. Basic document management (a la Keynote
http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html or Treepad
http://www.treepad.com/).
2. Detailed Calender/Task Information (a la MS Outlook or Calenderscope
http://www.calendarscope.com/) ... also a kind of Planner (big view of
ideas over large swaths of time)
3. Detailed Contact Information (a la MS Outlook)
4. A place to do *basic* free form brainstorming or "mind mapping" or
at least some kind of more dynamic linking of ideas (a la Concept Draw
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/main.php)
5. Some kind of journal capability, i.e., ideas tied to dates (a la The
Journal http://www.davidrm.com/)
6. Ability to export information in whole or part and also to filter
information exported to specific criteria.
7. Ability to search entire database.
8. Ability to dynamically link ideas/points in the database to each
other and to material outside the database (such as files on local drive
or to web addresses).
Click to expand...


Yeah - You aren't going to find it in a single application that's free.
What it sounds like you are looking for is an ACT! replacement - there
isn't one as far as I know, and I've been looking for years.. Closest
thing is either Tahoe Contact Manager, not free at $40, or
Franklin-Covey Planner, (REALLY not free).

To do this free you need:
Correlate (You can find it on the site in my sig) will do #1,# 4,# 7,
and #8,.
Addressbook (also on my site) will do #3.
For #5 and 6, you're out of luck as far as I know.
You might also try TheBrain.

John Hood
Web Site www.jhoodsoft.org
"The best home and business free software, no ads, no time limits, no
fluff."
"No kidding."
 
M

Michael Laplante

John Hood
Web Site www.jhoodsoft.org
"The best home and business free software, no ads, no time limits, no
fluff."
"No kidding."
Click to expand...

I thought I'd check your site out. Something wrong with it in both Firefox
and IE6 on my machine. In Firefox, your left-hand menu extends past the
bottom of the screen and scrolling downward only causes the right-hand
contents to scroll, so I can't access the bottom of your menu.

If I open it up in IE, your menu covers the left half of the screen,
including laying overtop of your right-hand content. So I can't read your
content.

You might want to check your CSS.

I tried to design some websites awhile ago using strictly CSS for layout
instead of tables. It caused me no end of grief. I discovered that not only
do browsers render CSS differently, but even the OS has an effect on how it
renders. In the end, I reverted to tables. I now only use CSS for text
formatting.


M
 
J

John Hood

Michael said:
I thought I'd check your site out. Something wrong with it in both Firefox
and IE6 on my machine. In Firefox, your left-hand menu extends past the
bottom of the screen and scrolling downward only causes the right-hand
contents to scroll, so I can't access the bottom of your menu.

If I open it up in IE, your menu covers the left half of the screen,
including laying overtop of your right-hand content. So I can't read your
content.

You might want to check your CSS.

I tried to design some websites awhile ago using strictly CSS for layout
instead of tables. It caused me no end of grief. I discovered that not only
do browsers render CSS differently, but even the OS has an effect on how it
renders. In the end, I reverted to tables. I now only use CSS for text
formatting.


M
Click to expand...
What version of IE are you using and what screen resolution?

Has anyone else seen this problem?

John
 
W

Werdhi

Jeff -- Thank you for pointing me to your very interesting program,
Orgenta. I've not seen something that categorizes on the fly like that.
I must admit, however, that I'm not at all sure how the program would
work in practice and, in the end, what the real purpose of it would be.
What's the "gentlemen" angle all about?

PurplePsychMD -- I've looked at Notesbrowser. It has potential. Seems
limited in terms of how much you can have in any collection of notes
(six pages). Has a number of useful aspects. I'm still inclined to go
with something more "tree" or "outliner" styled than that desktop sort
of interface.

John Hood: I've just looked at your site (which rendered fine for me
with Firefox 1.01). I'll need some time to look at what you've got
there. Thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree, that I've got
an awful like of criteria (possibly too much for any one program -- and
then there's the cons for having any one program do it all anyway). I
must admit though, that GemX DoOrganizer comes close but, unfortunately,
seems a little dicey in some respects.

Thanks for the continued feedback. I'll ultimately give folks the
verdict.

Best,

Werdhi
 
T

The Six Million Dollar Man

John Hood said:
What version of IE are you using and what screen resolution?

Has anyone else seen this problem?

John
Click to expand...

Just tried viewing in Firefox 1.0.1 and Internet Explorer 6 sp2, with no
problems at all.

HTH
 
M

Michael Laplante

John Hood said:
Michael Laplante wrote:
Click to expand...
What version of IE are you using and what screen resolution?
Click to expand...

Using IE6 on a Win98SE platform at a rez of 800*600. Firefox is 1.0.1. Can
send you a screenshot if you want.

I note in Firefox that your menu just covers the first column of letters in
your content. However, if I increase font size the content suddenly
"reflows" and a nice gutter opens up on the left hand side. However, the
issues of your nav menu still remain -- disappears past the bottom of the
screen and scrolling downward only scrolls the content on the right-hand
side not the left-hand menu.

In IE6, changing font size causes all sorts of weird to happen. Both menu
and content appear to scroll simultaneously, but either your menu overlaps a
good part of your content (at largest font) or your content overlaps your
menu (at smallest font).

As I mentioned earlier, I discovered that the same browser will render a
page differently depending on the OS. And Macs don't render the same as PCs.
I gave up on using CSS for layout and reverted to tables.

I also discovered a problem with Firefox. Firefox allows you to overwrite
the page's CSS with your own CSS. I was going nutz trying to figure out why
my CSS wasn't turning out the way I wanted when I had one of those Homer
Simpson 'd-oh' moments. I had forgotten that I had set up my own particulars
for Firefox. Once I removed those everything looked fine.
However, if that's the future for browsers, it going to make the task of Web
designers even harder.

M
 
J

Jeff Chapman

Hi Werdhi,

Thanks for your kind remarks. Categorizing on the fly has a stimulating
affect upon generating new parallel ideas and tends to increase
"synchronicity" -- an impetus to free-flow your thoughts and discover new
insights while entering Items.

"Organizing software for gentlemen" is a bit of a marketing ploy; organizing
+ gentlemen = orGenta.

(Although I wonder if somebody's personality could be deduced by what
software they use, or even the converse: if the software we use influences
our personalities!)

I'm just creating a Tutorial/Help guide this week and I've already
discovered a handful of bugs. Hence, early adopters get free registration --
go for it.

Best regards,

Jeff

--------- Original Message ---------
 
J

John Hood

Michael said:
Using IE6 on a Win98SE platform at a rez of 800*600. Firefox is 1.0.1. Can
send you a screenshot if you want.

I note in Firefox that your menu just covers the first column of letters in
your content. However, if I increase font size the content suddenly
"reflows" and a nice gutter opens up on the left hand side. However, the
issues of your nav menu still remain -- disappears past the bottom of the
screen and scrolling downward only scrolls the content on the right-hand
side not the left-hand menu.

In IE6, changing font size causes all sorts of weird to happen. Both menu
and content appear to scroll simultaneously, but either your menu overlaps a
good part of your content (at largest font) or your content overlaps your
menu (at smallest font).

As I mentioned earlier, I discovered that the same browser will render a
page differently depending on the OS. And Macs don't render the same as PCs.
I gave up on using CSS for layout and reverted to tables.

I also discovered a problem with Firefox. Firefox allows you to overwrite
the page's CSS with your own CSS. I was going nutz trying to figure out why
my CSS wasn't turning out the way I wanted when I had one of those Homer
Simpson 'd-oh' moments. I had forgotten that I had set up my own particulars
for Firefox. Once I removed those everything looked fine.
However, if that's the future for browsers, it going to make the task of Web
designers even harder.

M

Michael -
Click to expand...

I see what you mean. The site is designed for 1024x768 resolution.
Let me see what I can do with lower resolutions - The wiki I use to
build the site off of does not have a scrolling sidebar (much to it's
detriment.). I'll consult with the guy who helped with the Style-css
last time.

John H.
 
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