What's a good "Swiss Army Knife" information tool?

August 9, 2006 9:23 AM

I need a "Swiss Army Knife" information tool. Any suggestions?

I just started a job where I need a good "Swiss Army Knife" information gathering tool. I tried to do some creative Googling, but I think my needs may be too broad.

I've thought about using a variety of services like Del.icio.us and a separate news reader, but I'm really looking for something nice and integrated.

I had been looking at Onfolio earlier in the year after it went 2.0, but I don't want to use them now that it's just online-only.

Here's some of the req's:

- Should have some sort of RSS reader built-in

- Collecting Web "clippings" should be simple

- I'd like to be able to read Web "clippings" offline and be able to send them to other people as need be

- Outlook integration of any kind would be a plus

- I'd like to be able to make notes, add files, too.

- Should be relatively inexpensive (under $40 would be a plus)


Any ideas you have would be most appreciated.

posted by zooropa to computers & internet (12 comments total)

A wiki.
posted by orthogonality at 9:26 AM on August 9, 2006

OneNote does all this except for RSS and its price.
posted by Brian James at 10:05 AM on August 9, 2006

Yojimbo (on the Mac) does most of this, but not RSS, AFAIK.

I'd be surprised if you couldn't approximate all these features through Firefox and extensions.
posted by adamrice at 10:14 AM on August 9, 2006

Not sure about the RSS but DevonThink has all of the other features. Mac only. Devonthink.com.
posted by dobbs at 10:16 AM on August 9, 2006

Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier. I'm on Win2000 Pro.
posted by zooropa at 10:39 AM on August 9, 2006

Firefox along with the scrapbook extension and/or Sage extension meets most of your requirements. Firefox can natively support RSS feeds, but I find SAGE to be more robust.
posted by entropy at 10:48 AM on August 9, 2006

I have used quite a few different information managers and I am reasonably sure that there is no free/cheap Windows software to do this. My only recommendation echoes entropy: try to hack a solution together in Firefox.
posted by coolin86 at 11:18 AM on August 9, 2006

Oops, I forgot to mention EverNote. Its the most powerful note program that I have ever seen, but it doesn't do RSS feeds.
posted by coolin86 at 11:44 AM on August 9, 2006

And, of course, don't use Outlook unless someone's got a gun to your head.
posted by baylink at 11:46 AM on August 9, 2006

Flying in the face of baylinks relatively sound advice, Newsgator Outlook Edition might be of use.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 1:18 PM on August 9, 2006

I'm not sure about RSS, but I think UltraRecall does everything else you want. And a ton more.
posted by EllenC at 4:28 PM on August 9, 2006

What about TiddlyWiki?

It's a self-contained easy-to-edit wiki-in-a-file. It supports producing RSS feeds, and it has such a robust (read: you paste in some JS code) plugin system that I don't doubt that there's a plugin for loading RSS feeds, too. It has a live search, tags, and other cool things. It's a really free-form solution, but may be just what you're looking for. And since you'd be using it in Firefox, you can extend your setup with whatever extensions you want.
posted by bkudria at 8:12 AM on August 10, 2006