I tend to save writing for applications better suited to the purpose: Word or Mellel or OmniOutliner (the latter could probably me replaced by DT, but there are times when I simply do my best writing in OO and that’s all there is to it). Sometimes that’s grabbing extant materials from websites, PDFs, and DOCs and sometimes that’s for creation of reading notes that I create from materials I’m working with. But I mostly use it as a place for notetaking. That’s a lot of digressions – it’s a Friday afternoon – so I’ll get to the point: I only use a quarter of the power of DT and it’s already a tool I depend on. I ended up writing an article for the in-house journal which basically said that life was like a hypertext and that people turned to art not for its direct mimicry of life but it’s ordering of it. (And I remember the app when it was StorySpace – I was at Syracuse University when Catherine Smith, who was married to John Smith who was one of the early developers, was there and hypertexts were posed to become the next great literary medium. It has its devotees, and perhaps users on their forum could convince you. I found TB amazingly powerful, but in the end, just too overwhelming. in folklore studies, but I took a few years off to work in the Business School, being a management consultant of all things.) Well, as long as all the IU alum are pitching in … (I was there 91-99 for my Ph.D. I really like the various views though which gives a global picture of all your notes. It depends on how YOUR head works and my head it seems now doesn’t suit TinderBox. TinderBox I was always excited about, but less so now as my needs become clearer. ![]() I carry my database with me between work/home on an iPod. Without Spotlight, something like DEVONthink is a great alternative and miles above anything like Filemaker for OS integration and the needs of a (visual) researcher like myself.ĭEVONthink is my current favourite and it keeps getting better. These tools used with Spotlight might be even better (I dont run Tiger yet), but on their own they are very useful. Spotlight in Macintosh OSX Tiger could be (for you) all you need to stay on top of your gigabytes of data. ![]() The common feature with these is that they are effectively ‘databases’ with all the power of being able to search and cross-reference the things you collect. I have successfully used DEVONthink to manage aspects of my recent teaching and it looks like being my one tool of choice. I would highly recommend anyone who is in the business of collecting information by the bucket-loads consider some sort of Personal Information Manager (PIM) like these tools. Both tools allow linking and associations between information.Įach has their strengths and I have spent some time testing them. ![]() Without a system to manage a growing collection of URLs, PDF’s, notes, clippings, video/audio files and so on it starts to all get very difficult to locate resources let alone remember links and associations. In my case there’s nothing like having a doctorate weighing heavily on my shoulder in terms of a motivation… especially of the kind where you spend time assessing various tools to help you gather, organise and search resources and eventually write. ![]() I can capture web pages, grab text, add notes, classify, search and so on… and in more formats. Im now discovering that I can use DEVONthink for the kind of information management I had originally purchased TinderBox for.
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