Features I Like

Friendly Interface. LeaderTask has a friendly interface. I am given to graphic interfaces and LeaderTask is an eye candy. I like the fact that it fills up my screen and even allows me to change its colors. The interface is very different from that of Outlook, but is similar to some other freeware PIMs I have tried in the past. And so it took me only a few minutes to figure out — without the support of a Help manual — what the buttons are for and how to make the software do what it should.

Integration of Components. Another feature I like about LeaderTask is the integration of its components. It has a Project, Categories, Contacts and Calendar panels which are programmed so that that they can also show particular perspectives of the data I type into the database. I may type in my data through the Projects panel and my contacts through the Contacts panel, but when I click on a date in the Calendar panel, all tasks, events, assignments for people and notes associated with that date are shown to me in the Calendar Day-view. I don’t have to worry about losing my data; I just make sure that I associate them with the proper date, category, project or contact and I can find them with the click of a button.

Hierarchical Tree. I like the hierarchical tree feature for tasks. That way I can enumerate several smaller tasks under one big task. I mentioned above that I am in charge of publishing a monthly newsletter for our community. The creation of a monthly issue itself involves several steps. LeaderTask allows me to enumerate these tasks and to associate each with an assigned contact. The feature really helps the monitoring of such multiple tasks.

Contacts. One of the better features I like about LeaderTask is the Contacts panel. One can associate pictures with each contact and some notes. There are all sorts of possible data that one can associate with each contact. If you are an employer and also would like to write your observations about a particular employee, LeaderTask’s contacts panel can provide the necessary functionality for an Employees’ database.

Notes. The feature I really like about LeaderTask is its Note editor. It is an RTF editor that supports the pasting of Images and file attachment. I had tasks during the past weeks that had me writing different kinds of documents. What I did was simply to attach them to the notes of a particular tasks and I found it easy to retrieve them without the use of my Windows Explorer which is quite slow on folders with a lot of content. The File-attachment feature works on any kind of document it seems, even those of MSOffice and PDFs. Clicking them opens them up in the associated application (e.g. HTML in a browser) so I don’t need to make an extra click whenever I need to edit or read a document I have stored into LeaderTask.

Autosave. Finally, I like the auto-save feature. LeaderTask just allows me to work and not worry about whether I have saved my work or not.

Features I’d Like To See

The version of LeaderTask I am using is 6.6.01. From the looks of it, it has been frequently updated and still, the makers of LeaderTask encourage their users to suggest features. This emboldens me to make the following observations.

Flexible Tabs. Right now, LeaderTask’s tabbed interface is dependent on the kind of panel one opens. When one opens up the Projects panel, for example, only the contents of that panel appears. I would like to open the tabs I choose from the panels. That way I could have tabs from Projects and Categories, for example, combined.

More Buttons for the Notes Editors. As it is now, the Notes editor of LeaderTask is quite advanced, but I would like to see a feature that would allow me to insert an image — not just paste — into the document. I also would like to see a button that says “Insert Content from a File.”

I like the Note Editor of LeaderTask so much that I have been using it for typing articles and documents these past few weeks. I really would appreciate an Export/Import feature for the Note Editor.

The Notes of LeaderTask can be associated not only with a task but also with a date. This latter gives LeaderTask its diary feature. What I’d like to see is a Notes-view that will allow me to see the notes I’ve typed for a date appearing like a continuous page of diary entries with their particular dates and/or tasks.

Repeated Tasks. I do not know whether this is a bug but each time I edit a task to indicate that it is repeated, LeaderTask automatically creates a copy of the edited task as a sub-task.

Conclusion

LeaderTask is an excellent Personal Information Manager. It not only reminds one of the tasks one has to perform but also allows one the opportunity of reviewing one’s tasks and evaluating the people who work on them. No wonder it is called "LeaderTask" — it helps one work and think like a Leader. Whatever "imperfections" it may have right now is not due to bad programming but to the limitations of time and resources that unfortunately impose itself on any excellent work in the making.

LeaderTask is available at this website.

Biblioscape: What is it?

Biblioscape is a research information manager. It is designed

• for researchers working in different fields
• to take in notes of different kinds
• to facilitate gathering data through the web or from traditional sources (e.g. the library)
• to help organize those notes through categories, links
• to help the researcher retrieve those notes
• to process the data like a word processor (given the type of license one has purchased)

Features I Like about Biblioscape

1. It is easy to use. It just took me a few minutes to figure out how to use it and afterwards produced a 1,000 word article with it.
2. Associating notes to categories and linking one note to another.
3. The Rich Text Format (RTF) note editor.
4. The possibility of browsing the web using Biblioscape’s native browser and capturing data from a webpage for automatic inclusion in one’s notes.
5. The possibility of creating different kinds of notes: whether text notes and reference notes which one can then associate with one another.
6. In the professional edition, to collect notes into an outline and export it or print it out.
7. The interface icons that makes the classification of notes easy.
8. The ability to take in graphics that are pasted onto a note.
9. Outline creation and one-click draft generation
10. Quick search and retrieval of data.

How I’ve Managed Three Articles with Biblioscape

To date, I have already created two articles from Biblioscape which I installed in my computer about five days ago. It is not the first notes manager I’ve come across. What makes Biblioscape different from other index-card-like note managers is its ability to integrate in one user interface all its features. Biblioscape is not difficult to learn. If one has worked with index cards and notebooks while doing research, the software makes research doubly easy: first, it compresses the work area into a small space. Second, it makes the retrieval of data very quick. I don’t have to explain how Biblioscape makes the workspace small. After all one needs only a laptop that covers a few square inch of space to use the software. The retrieval system of Biblioscape is a combination of both traditional and contemporary methods. The contemporary method is through the use of a search engine. Biblioscape has a very fast search engine that makes a list of data depending on a keyword. The traditional means is something that the software allows through “Collections” and “Categories”.

One begins note-taking through a “Collection” within a “Container”. A “Container” is like a mega–folder that can contain another “Container”, “Notes”, “Task Lists”, and “References” and others. A “Notes Collection” is like a smaller folder that would contain the notes for a particular topic or subject. This is your basic index cards collection. In Biblioscape, it can contain a variety of content: a quotation, a paraphrase, a summary, a claim, an evidence for a claim, etc. A “Task Collection” would be the researcher’s notes for following-up certain ideas. The “Reference Collection” would be for the books, magazines or documents that one makes use of in one’s paper.

When one creates a note, one begins from a particular collection. Biblioscape automatically creates a link between Collection and individual note. Once the note is saved, it will appear each time the Collection from which it was created is clicked.

Biblioscape also allows the association of this note to a “Category” that one creates. Categories (or Taxonomy) can be colorcoded so that one can easily see a note with more than one category associations. Thus a card I created about “Food Restrictions” in Acts 15 can be linked to a category I created under “Apologetics” and another one under “NT (New Testament)”. This would make manual retrieval easier later on.

Biblioscape and Word Processing

Unfortunately, the word processing functionality is available only for the Librarian and Professional edition. After one has gathered enough notes and is now ready to put together a paper, one need only to go to “Compositon”, pick up the notes from the “Categories” to which to the notes are associated, create an outline and click “Generate Draft.” From there, one can continue to edit one’s work on the interface of Biblioscape or export the draft into an RTF file for editing in another more powerful Word Processor like MS Office Word or Open Office.

Personal Evaluation and Rating

Biblioscape is one real research information manager. It is designed to work with a lot of data and intended to be used for serious work. Still however, it has room for a lot of improvements.

1. Although one can create charts through it, one cannot create graphic files with it. It would be a great help Biblioscape has a graphic editor — even if it were as simple as WinPaint — so that one can associate notes with sketches or drawings.
2. Word processing is only possible through the Librarian and Professional editions which are quite expensive.
3. Customization is very limited. One cannot add more colors nor icons to the Categories, nor can one add to the Note-types.
4. It is still buggy at some points. Sometimes, an item under one category appears in another as if it were linked to it. When one tries to remove the link, Biblioscape gives an error message saying in effect that one can remove links only in linked items.

Given these limitations, I would give Biblioscape a rating of 7 out of a possible 10.

Check out Biblioscape at its website.

There is an article from Life-Hacker which puts forward Thomas Edison as an example of a successful note-taker. The author describes Edison’s note-taking ability thus:

Famous inventor Thomas Edison is probably the most experienced note-taker in the world. His diary which is still maintained as an important part of the United States historical record contains five million (5,000,000) pages. Important developments such as his work on perfecting the light bulb and electric lighting systems are captured in great detail. He never met a sheet of paper he didn’t like.

Edison’s note-taking habits have seven characteristics. First, they are comprehensive. Anything worth taking down especially those relevant to the inventor’s work is recorded. Second, the notes are “forward-looking”. “Things like lists of contacts, appointments, “to do” lists, and actionable items for follow up or later review were all contained within his comprehensive system,” writes the author. Third, the notes are also retrospective (“rearward-looking”, writes the author): “He was always able to review past work and avoid repeatedly going down dead-end roads. He could always review whatever he had said or was told. He never had to remember most things as long as he could remember how to look it up later.” Fourth, the notes are searchable. With today’s technology we can “tag” files or associate them with certain keywords which we feed search engines, whether web-based or desktop-based. For Edison, it was a page in one of his notebooks that provides the key. Edison had “a fairly good system of archiving his records by a combination of chronological and subject matter based systems. He created numerous groupings, files, folders, etc. which helped him to get to the right part of his records in a reasonably short time.” Fifth, the notes covered the questions “Who, what, where, when and how much”. Sixth, especially as regards a current work activity, the notes also answered the question “How and why”. And finally, the notes became for Edison, a prodigious memory-aid. The author of the article makes an interesting point here:

By writing everything down that he thought was worth writing, he was able to free himself of the burden of having to remember it. A strange and almost unexpected thing occurs. The process of writing things down aids in the mental memory retention. The combination of having the confidence in knowing the information is on record and easily retrievable combined with the improved retention from the process of writing it down, creates a winning combination when it comes to memory

This last observation reminds me of what a Dominican Latin professor (Fr. Vargas, OP, now deceased) told us once: “If you wish to remember, write it down. The more senses you use, the better the memory.” So with the study of Latin, at least, not only the sense of sight should be used; one should also use the tongue (pronouncing the words), the ears (listening to the pronounced words) and the sense of touch in writing a word down. His advice to make use of more than one sense is actually a given in psychology. Fr. Merino, OP whenever he would draw maps on the board would remind us: “If you wish to remember anything, write it, draw it.” All these nostalgic data points to effective note-taking.

Fr. Enrico Gonzalez, another Dominican well known for his witty sermons, recommends a form of note-taking to his students in Sacred Eloquence:

Keep a preacher’s journal. A preacher is a reporter of good news. As such, he, like any professional news reporter, is armed with notebook and pencil to jot down anything that happens on the road — from a commonplace anecdote to a scientific breakthrough, from a newspaper clipping to a technical article, from a one-line adage to a lengthy speech — and bring it to dialog with the Word of God, the only veritable good news. (Enrico Gonzalez, OP, Diary of a Preacher: Guidelines for Preaching, pp. 45-46)

Journal keeping is a form of note-taking. Fr. Gonzalez has in mind a journal for a specific task, that of preaching. But a journal can cover a lot of topics. If you are like me, even episodes from certain TV shows like “Mysterious Ways” or “Lost” can find its way into a journal. Journal-keeping not only improves one’s writing skills. It also helps one become more aware of oneself. It is an aid to self-knowledge. The spiritual journal that some Augustinian sisters keep, the method of which I also tried to learn back when I was in college, is a simple notebook with a pattern (a “template” people would say today). At the top line, one had the title “Bible Passage”, below it, the question “What did I feel while I read the passage?”, and finally, below that question, a follow-up, “Why (did I feel what I felt)?” Finally, some lines for “Prayer”. This kind of note-taking however cannot do without some assistance from a spiritual director. In fact, the spiritual journal is a means by which one tracks one’s spiritual growth.

Journal-keeping also helps in tracking the progress of activities whether personal or institutional. Institutional note-taking takes the form of minutes of meetings, reports to the President, project reports, etc. These “institutional notes” become useful especially when administrators are changed and new ones will need to follow-through what their predecessors were not able to complete. Within this context, a middle manager who has monitored his office’s activity would be a lot of help to whomever would continue the work of that office.

Modern technology now allows us to keep a paperless environment or at least to minimize the use of paper. Fr. Desmond Foley, OSA used to tell me that computers keep us from destroying our trees. He made this “environmental observation” while showing me his new laptop. That was in the early 1990s (or was it very late 80s?). Towards the end of the article mentioned above, the author asks a set of pertinent questions about our own system of note-taking:

How can we improve upon Edison’s system using today’s technologies? Obviously, we have invented the ball point pen to replace his messy quill and ink bottle so that notes can be written in real time. In his day, he perfected the typewriter. Today, we are no longer committed to getting stuff onto paper as the final form of record retention. Vast portions of Edison’s original archives have recently been digitized and can be viewed online. This eliminates the need for mothballs and maintaining rooms full of old papers that can only be studied by someone showing up and going through them one page at a time.

How does your system compare to Edison’s? His was comprehensive and scalable to wherever his interests lay. Is your system similarly scalable? What about the content? How much of the information in your system has objectively measurable value? Edison kept everything and it all went up in value as his overall fame and power grew. How valuable has the information in your system become (or is becoming)? How scalable is your system as your interests change (whether expanding of shifting to other areas)? Edison always used the best available technology to maintain his records as efficiently as he thought they could be maintained. Have you similarly employed sound technologies for taking and keeping your notes?

I still use low-tech forms of note-taking alongside the computer. I have several notebooks containing notes on different aspects of my life and work, from bible sentence flows to notes taken from books and articles, to the articles I actually write and publish whether online or offline. My computer has several note-taking tools, some of which I have acquired for free by writing software reviews. These “tools” in fact now contribute to the ever shrinking hard drive of my computer. The fact is, notes are reusable data that can be recycled for purposes for which they were not originally intended. A sentence flow I create in my notebook can later on be scanned for use in a presentation for bible study, for example. In any case, I wonder which is more difficult to make: to create a note or to keep it? I think Edison’s example is worth emulating: he not only wrote his notes, he also kept them in such a way that he could retrieve them later for reuse.

For desktop-based note-taking tools, check out the following pages:

• AML Pages
• AzzCardFile

For the article mentioned above, go here.