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Threads of ThoughtThe PastI've been long interested in Outlining since my first exposure to ThinkTank and PC Outliner. In those days gone by, my eyes would light up at an Apple ][ running a Microsoft Z-80 card on an amber 80 character x 25 line screen. And the words "UCSD Pascal" somehow made things more exalted. At David Winer's www.Outliners.com, you can even download the original ThinkTank. The ThinkTank I used was a version 1 concept and it had it's moments but it was stuck on CP/M-80 when the business world was going IBM PC and MS-DOS. Eventually, BrownBag PC Outliner for DOS came out and I thought that was pretty cool. Then there was Ready! a lite weight, memory resident program bundled (if I am not mistaken with Word for DOS, until Word figured out how to do outlining). But the polished one was Symantec Grandview - it had lots of mature functionality. I did much thought processing on it. I was overjoyed when Lotus came out with Symphony - you see, in serious use, I never got stuck into 1-2-3 Release 2. Symphony was incredible (I was then fascinated with Context MBA but that vanished without a trace) as it was a spreadsheet, outliner, wordprocessor, charting, terminal emulator and simple database manager). The outliner was simple but it was an outliner. As I said, Microsoft Word for Windows now knows how to do outlines but to me, it's a word processor first and an outliner second - something like an elephant that can dance. For many years, outlining vanished from mainstream - somehow the Windows GUI killed them. There was a fascinating product called InfoCentral 7. It was an independent product that Corel swallowed, enhanced, then gave free (part of the kitchen sink) with Word Perfect 7. It was an object oriented database masquerading as an Outliner, PIM. Full of potential. Flawed in execution - you needed to put on a helmet to force yourself to think. It was and is good but has disappeared in the vaults of Corel (who keep trying to flog that useless beast, WordPerfect, destroying the rest of the kitchen sink). Over the past couple of years however, they're quietly coming back. What I use todayI surveyed the Palm market and used Progect for a while. Seriously good. Only problem - works on the Palm but has no MS Windows companion product - so you can't edit the data on your PC. Right now, I use Natara Bonsai. It is a Palm app with a not too shabby Windows companion - you can edit the data in Windows. Hotsync is both ways - desktop to Palm and vice versa although I don't try to do a merge. And George Wayland provides excellent support. I have also seriously used Treepad. It is freeware. If I had to make a decision on a high value piece of software that brings back some of the essence of Outlining (and brings back some of the ethos of ThinkTank, Grandview), I'd use Treepad. It has even matured to an enhanced product - Treepad Plus (Henk Hagedoorn has learnt how to use the RTF control). There is also TreePad SAFE - an encrypted product - last month the promo gave you both Treepad Plus and TreePad SAFE for the price of one. Not an Outliner, is The Brain. I use that when Outlining fails to deliver. View tutorials here. Casual EncountersAtlantic Coast PLC (remember Brown Bag Software of the DOS days?) has built PC Outliner for Windows. It was buggy - I tried out the betas and although it did have some elements of PC Outliner for DOS, it missed the essence of today. Green Parrots Action Outline is very good looking. I was especially charmed but in the end, did not see high amount of functionality. I tried InfoSelect evals. Nope. Expensive in my opinion. Other Palm centric products: Aportis Brainforest, HandsHigh ThoughtManager, HiNote, ShadowPlan, Arranger. Mind Maps / Knowledge ManagementI tried Inspiration. It allows you to Buzan Mind Maps. I bought a copy. Take a look at Lexis Nexis Hyperbolic View. Fascinated? It's made with Inxight Star Tree (Java based) technology. ThinkMap is a related web site navigation product which is used in the production of the Visual Thesaurus. |
