[Printer Friendly Version]

Software Review

Flash FreeMind Browser

If you like concept mapping as much as I do, you'll be pleased with the progress that's been made on the Flash FreeMind Browser. This allows very smart and snappy web-based interaction with mind-maps created by the open-source Freemind tool. Of course, it's essential to use this for it's intended purpose -- conceptual mapping and exploration -- rather than for unnecessarily elaborate website design. Posted: 8/28/06; 11:45:13 AM #

Videocue

Vara Software is the developer of the remarkable and powerful Wirecast webcasting application that has found its way into my regular workflow and has been the subject of several reviews, including the centerpiece of my Everyday Software article on how we webcast our online workshops. Unlike Wirecast, Videocue (Mac only) is not an every day tool for me. Videocue is a slick combination of recording software and a desktop teleprompter. This would be an ideal system for anyone who likes to work from a script, whose workflow is so tight for time that they have to, or has other people write material for them to deliver. Your face (or other images, slides, or video that you can weave in) appears in a window right next to the slowly scrolling text of your speech. You have control over size and pacing of the prompt, as well as a wide range of video and audio settings. Plus, it has an utterly intuitive transition and titles management system. I only wish I used scripts more often, that's how much I like this software. It would be perfect for video podcasting. Posted: 2/3/06; 12:48:42 PM #

The R Project for Statistical Computing

Every now and then, I need to do some serious statistical analysis or some complex modeling prior to development of a new tool. In those cases, I often turn to The R Project for Statistical Computing (cross platform). This is by no means a point and click application. Rather, it is a sophisticated environment for implementing statistical techniques. It has the added benefits of being open source and massively extensible. The range of free add-on packages available has proven very useful to me, since it includes versions of Bayesian tools and genetic algorithms that have interested me recently. Posted: 2/3/06; 12:01:25 PM #

Webstractor

In one of my larger research projects this last year, I had the chance to put a tool called Webstractor (Mac only) to the test. Webstractor is an elegant assistant to web based research. It collects web clippings which you can then edit, keeping the reference URL, but removing all the extraneous navigation, branding, and advertising content. You can search your material, reorganize it, annotate it, save it to PDF, and give it a table of contents. It's ideal for keeping highly directed research in one place and readying it for analysis and publication. Posted: 1/13/06; 1:03:30 PM #

TAMS Analyzer

I lot of the research work that I do involves text, sometimes very large quantities of text. Sometimes, it's critical to be able to mark up that text in ways that reflect my research questions. That's when I need a tool like TAMS Analyzer (Mac and GNUstep). TAMS (Text Analysis Mark-up System) is an open source application for analyzing themes in documents. It is particularly useful in media analysis and similar sociological investigations. If you are ever in the position of wanting to genuinely understand trends in your field, you would want to give TAMS Analyzer to a trained group of volunteers (or graduate students) and use it to build a coded understanding of the documents (or web sites) that mediate your communities of practice. Posted: 1/13/06; 12:51:29 PM #

DevonThink

If you do research or writing, or you are just an information hound, you may want to consider a remarkable piece of software that I have spent more than a year trying to incorporate into my workflow. It's called DevonThink (Mac only) and it's a desktop file management and information discovery tool. It blends classic taxonomic organizing with full text search, wiki style cross links, concordance, and an inference engine that learns from how you categorize things. It's a smart tool for writers and researchers who work with a diverse range of information nuggets. It is extensible, scriptable, and capable of organizing, viewing, and editing a huge range of data types. The company behind it provides solid support and the user community if vibrant. Finally, it's easy to get your data into and out of it, which is to me an sign of great respect for the user. Posted: 1/13/06; 12:33:28 PM #

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 #