[bbales]

OK, I'm just wondering if anyone has any personal experience with any of these products: NoteTaker, Circus Ponies' Notebook, CopyWrite or DevonThink (I think it's called) or any other product that suppoedly helps you organize all the various parts of a particular project or article (I'm a writer) or whatever. I've tried many of them, including StickyBrain. They're kind of different categories -- sticky brain is an organizer kind of thing, while the others are more for writing. But I'm looking for something in which to store all the different things you come across, whether for a particular project or not.

And I'm very, very confused at this point...

[gorickey]

Have you heard of xPad by chance? Give it a look and see if it does when you are looking for:

http://maniacalrage.net/xpad/

I use it daily and give it:

[midwinter]

Originally posted by bbales:
OK, I'm just wondering if anyone has any personal experience with any of these products: NoteTaker, Circus Ponies' Notebook, CopyWrite or DevonThink (I think it's called) or any other product that suppoedly helps you organize all the various parts of a particular project or article (I'm a writer) or whatever. I've tried many of them, including StickyBrain. They're kind of different categories -- sticky brain is an organizer kind of thing, while the others are more for writing. But I'm looking for something in which to store all the different things you come across, whether for a particular project or not.

And I'm very, very confused at this point...

Try either DevonThink Personal Edition (free) or MacJournal. Both have their advantages. I'm using DevonThink at the moment and am quite happy.

Cheers
Scott

[cpac]

I'd suggest just downloading and trying all the demos and seeing what works best for you. I'm personally partial to OmniOutliner (3.0 will reportedly be out later this year and allow insertion of images/file links, etc.), but don't forget that a folder in the Finder can also work pretty well (notes in the "Get Info" window, colored categories, etc.)

[kcmac]

I prefer Notebook by Circus Ponies.

It enables you to superorganize your material into sections, subsections, etc. It takes advantage of Services from any app and lets you take text clippings that automatically go to the exact section of your organized system/section.

You can use colors, keywords, etc to find anything you have entered. It automatically indexes your things at the end of the notebook and creates a hyperlinked table of contents at the beginning.

You can automatically send your entire notebook to the web for others to view.

Plus, I just enjoy the notebook paradigm. It is all very familar.

You will find that if you attempt to make more smaller and focused notebooks instead of a meganotebook that you will enjoy your experience more. (You could have a junk notebook that is made up of sections and subsections of some heading that works for all the stuff you see that is interesting but don't know when, if or how you will use it.)

Notetaker is more about features than ease of use. It can do more than Notebook but whether or not you would use the features is another issue. It is also slower and creates bigger files than Notebook. They are going to develop Notetaker for Windows soon so who knows what that could do for mac development.

I tried MacJournal. Nice but not structured enough for tons of info. In a sense, it is like a folder on the desktop that you just keep adding to. No real hierarchy. Info is easier to search for however than the standard folder.

xPad looks interesting but it's still just makes a big list of stuff. The price is good but then again, MacJournal is free and the developer still puts out updates.

If you are just a collector of stuff I can see why you would be confused. It's the same problem I saw in my dad's basement which was stuffed full of interesting relics. He claimed he knew where everything was... There is probably no perfect solution but I would think a solution that let's you easily establish a simple or complex hierarchy with many ways of searching for it will come the closest. That is why I would go with Notebook.

If you haven't given them the full test drive recently, I would do so.

I am interested to see what the Notebook app in the new MS Office Suite for the mac will look like. It could be that it will be just as good as Notebook. But that means I will have to upgrade to the next Office. Argh.

Good luck.

[bbales]

Thanks for the comments. I'm currently testing out Xpad and Notebook. I might give CopyWrite a try, too. THe problem is I always like to read, read read the manuals so I know what I'm doing, so this is taking a bit of time. But -- as they say, that's life.

I have OmniOutliner, too, but while I like that for organizing an article, it doesn't seem to work for organizing all the bits of info that come my way that I think are interesting and I want to save. Maybe I'm using it wrong...

[squilla]

I use NoteTaker, and generally I like it well enough. They announced announced an upgrade a couple of days ago, but their web site's disappeared, and they're not in the phone book either.

[alex_kac]

It may or may not fit your needs, but as the developer I'm biased. Try out MindFortress - <http://www.mindfortress.com>.

I mean its like StickBrain in that you do your own organization, but it supports rich notes, graphics, and what may be what makes it relevant to you - custom templates. You can create your own custom data card that fits your needs exactly that nobody could make otherwise. Its a 15 day use trial.

And its only a 1.01 right now, but we're working on 1.1 to improve some key things with some import features as well as easier navigation.

[ambush]

sorry, but xPad just sucks.

[mark2]

I write a lot, too. There is no all in one solution that I've found. So I have several word Processors and several 'organizers,' all of them put to a lot of use.

The best all around organizer I've found is called iData Pro. There's a long term demo available. It's a flexible database program that's easy to use, has a great find system and allows the use of both freeform and field based datafiles. You can set up as many files as system memory allows.

I have about 20 datafiles dedicated to work, home, writing, etc. It's worth checking out.

http://www.coastalfog.net/idata/downloads.html

You also might want to have a look at Z-Write. It's a word processor that can be useful for writers.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by bbales:
OK, I'm just wondering if anyone has any personal experience with any of these products: NoteTaker, Circus Ponies' Notebook, CopyWrite or DevonThink (I think it's called) or any other product that suppoedly helps you organize all the various parts of a particular project or article (I'm a writer) or whatever. I've tried many of them, including StickyBrain. They're kind of different categories -- sticky brain is an organizer kind of thing, while the others are more for writing. But I'm looking for something in which to store all the different things you come across, whether for a particular project or not.

And I'm very, very confused at this point...

I've been using Notebook for a couple weeks now. I really like it -- it's great for organizing information, making "to do" lists, etc.

I tried to use OmniOutliner for this, but it was burdensome -- no "to do" dates for to do lists, and it was all a single page (unless you used multiple documents), which wasn't how I wanted to organize the info. Plus, the tabs are really nice, and indexing and table of contents.

It takes a while to find your way around, but I give it a big "thumbs up."

[Simon X]

I've been using NoteBook for quite a while now and am very happy with it and the way it is constantly been updated and improved. One feature I really like which the previous posters have not mentioned is its attachment features. Not only can you add/link-to any file onto your page but also add/link-to a whole folder. Just think off the possibilities. Could be used as a way to archive a project folder with added notes in the notebook page for example. I've sent feedback to the developer suggesting future improvements and he has shown interest.

This is just one feature which I like and thought I'd point out. All in all I really like NoteBook.

[milhouse]

Two thumbs up for Devonthink.

They'll be coming out with a Pro version soon as well.

Oh, almost forgot:

[angusmac]

Originally posted by bbales:
...any other product that suppoedly helps you organize all the various parts of a particular project or article (I'm a writer) or whatever... I'm looking for something in which to store all the different things you come across, whether for a particular project or not.

And I'm very, very confused at this point...

As a confused writer too, I would recommend the lean power and simplicity of iOrganize:

http://iorganize.brunoblondeau.com/

Cheers

Angus