1Percenter

This is a quick introduction to the software tools that the VPZtms uses. The tools are divided into the categories that I outlined in the “Introduction to Information Management” section.

All of these tools satisfy my requirements of being simple, flexible, and easy to use.

Discovery

NetNewsWire - I’ve already written 2053 words about RSS, so I’ll refrain from adding more now.

Safari - I prefer Safari’s simple, straight-forward approach to web browsing over Firefox’s more feature-rich, extension-enhanced browing experience. In my opinion, most Firefox extensions allow you to do things in a web browser that are really better served by separate applications anyway (such as writing, storing notes, and RSS feed reading).

Sogudi - Quick Search plugin for Safari.

fwit - Incremental Search plugin for Safari.

Storage

The Finder - Yes, I use the regular old Finder (with a couple of basic customizations) to manage most of my stored information.

FolderOrg AppleScript - An AppleScript folder action that, when attached to a folder, automatically moves anything placed into that folder into a subfolder named with the current date.

Refinement

VoodooPad - Danny O’Brien’s research of “prolific alpha geeks” found that large numbers of his interviewees stored their information as plain text. VoodooPad’s wiki functionality combines most of the advantages of plain text with the incredibly powerful ability to dynamically add any number of hierarchical sub-levels to any piece of text. VoodooPad is at the heart of my time management system.

Roaring Penguin’s Remind - I use Remind in conjunction with VoodooPad’s built-in “run” functionality to give follow-up dates to to-dos.

iCal - I use iCal to manage to-dos that must happen on a specific date, or at a specific time, such as scheduled meetings. iCal is missing a key software calendar feature, namely a way to automatically add reminders to all events, but I stick with it anyway hoping one day Apple will give it some attention.

I-Search - I navigate my to-do list using incremental search. This wonderful system-wide plug-in gives incremental search to most Cocoa applications.

Presentation

I am not going to list any presentation tools because these applications depend entirely on which medium you are presenting information in.

General

Apple Mail - An email client has three roles under my system: a searchable database of information, a way to manage a list of people to email back, and an application for reading, writing and sending email. These three roles commingle discovery, storage, refinement, and presentation, therefore, email will be an exception to many of the information management rules that I recommend. Later I’ll write about why I think breaking these rules is a good idea for email.

TextPander - Automatically expand user-customized abbreviations to longer pieces of text in any application. This is very flexible functionality that works as both a typing-aid and an information storage/retrieval mechanism.

Quicksilver - Quicksilver needs no introduction, so I’ll just point out that even Tog, who has written extensively about disproving that the keyboard has advantages over the mouse (although personally I think his research is inconclusive), acknowledges a speed increase when using this kind of keyboard-only tool:

“I haven’t performed or reviewed a stopwatch test, but LaunchBar [same concept as Quicksilver] should be able to outperform a visual interface for complex, repetitive switching sequences by an expert user.”

Summary

This is just a quick introduction to the tools that my information management system uses. Future topics in this series will cover both the details of how this system works, and general tips, tricks and observations about using these tools to manage information.