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

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

zooropa — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:23:47 -0800

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.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:26:44 -0800

A wiki.

By: Brian James

Brian James — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:05:09 -0800

OneNote does all this except for RSS and its price.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:14:27 -0800

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.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:16:08 -0800

Not sure about the RSS but DevonThink has all of the other features. Mac only. Devonthink.com.

By: zooropa

zooropa — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:39:17 -0800

Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier. I'm on Win2000 Pro.

By: entropy

entropy — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:48:22 -0800

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.

By: coolin86

coolin86 — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:18:39 -0800

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.

By: coolin86

coolin86 — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:44:43 -0800

Oops, I forgot to mention EverNote. Its the most powerful note program that I have ever seen, but it doesn't do RSS feeds.

By: baylink

baylink — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:46:55 -0800

And, of course, don't use Outlook unless someone's got a gun to your head.

By: DrtyBlvd

DrtyBlvd — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 13:18:03 -0800

Flying in the face of baylinks relatively sound advice, Newsgator Outlook Edition might be of use.

By: EllenC

EllenC — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:28:24 -0800

I'm not sure about RSS, but I think UltraRecall does everything else you want. And a ton more.

By: bkudria

bkudria — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:12:03 -0800

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.