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On the Varieties of Software Reviews

Ever since getting out of the nonprofit communication software business, I have taken a deep interest in other developers and their offerings. Because of my commitment to a systems perspective, I have so far confined my reviews to our Everyday Software series, which presents tools within the context of the communication ecosystem to which they have to contribute, after a period of regular use of six months or more. (I loathe regurgitated press releases and feature recitations masquerading as meaningful reviews and have refused to slip into that pattern myself, despite the fact that it's what vendors are used to and even, sometimes, seem to prefer.) The software that, after a period of months, becomes part of our community of tools is the software that will end up in our Everyday Software, at some point. Or sometimes, I will get a license to some software and I will know within weeks that it's not likely to fit into any of our workflows in the near future. Those will never get reviewed because I have no time to write negative reviews unless I think there is an active disservice to the sector being done by the company and its tools. It's recently become clear to me that there is a third category: There is software that seems to find a special use from time to time, or with which I'm fascinated and experiment incessantly, or which may not work as a product, but is doing something very interesting. All of these end up in a kind of software limbo in our office, neither integrated nor set aside. Today, I will start reviewing these tools from time to time, to describe what interests me about them, even though they have not (at least yet) found their way into our daily workflow. I may also highlight aspects of software that has found a place, but about which I might want to say a few more things that didn't merit attention in the broader review context. And I think I may be able to illuminate a few things about how I apply some system requirements to individual applicaitons. I hope you enjoy them. Posted: 11/27/05; 9:56:54 PM #

Ecto: Full-Featured, Desktop Blogging Software

In my article on the content management workflow for Nonprofit Online News, I mentioned Ecto, a desktop blogging application that I admire, but don't use. Ecto is available for Windows and Mac OS, although not for Linux. It plays well with all the major blogging platforms. It supports per-post control of trackback, comments, post time, categories, and tags. It is a top notch writer's tool, with spell check, integration with other content tools (like iPhoto on Mac OS), word count, rich formatting, and filters. Unfortunately, there is one important protocol (involving a separate element for links to which individual blog entries point), essential to the one link per entry model of the Nonprofit Online News platform, that Ecto doesn't support. I think this is an elegant example of the connection between a core aspect of a communication model and a technical protocol. Posted: 11/27/05; 9:56:38 PM #

Curio: A Rich Environment for Ideas and Content

My colleagues and students know how much I like effective visual thinking. I use outliners, conceptual mapping software, ecosystem modeling, and network exploration tools. I draw circles and arrows of ideas when I talk on the phone. And I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting ways to make sense of ideas and manage information. So, it's only natural that I would be attracted to Curio, by Zengobi. Curio is not easy to describe and while I continue to explore it, it still hasn't found a home in my workflow, as much as it still intrigues me. But it's likely to be the perfect idea exploration and documentation tool for many visual thinkers. If you have ever taken some physical documents, like photographs or index cards, arranged and rearrange them physically, and have found that this process helps you develop insights, then Curio is the digital tool that allows you to scale up that technique. You can drag all sorts of related documents, images, clippings, and web search results into various "idea spaces", save it, rearrange it, and share it in a variety of ways. In other words, it's a scrapbook for thinkers. Posted: 11/27/05; 9:56:28 PM #