All,

I had an off-list request to amalgamate this discussion for re-posting. Here
it is, with no specific credit reserved for me. (We've all contributed a
good bit.) Any of you are free to post what follows this intro wherever you
like. It's a friendly amalgamation of a lot of the recommendations sent
through the Idea Keeper list over the last couple of days. (I had no idea I
was going to set off such a firestorm with my initial post on a list that
usually is fairly inactive. :-) ) I'd also like to think Steve Jamieson for
recommending DevonThink. It debuted a little shaky, and I hadn't looked at
it since. It seems to have matured into a very powerful program--and,
finally, a worthy rival to Info Recall in the Windows world.

As an aside, I have had awful experiences with StickyBrain, which some of
you recommended. While I found it helpful enough for small projects to
purchase it (a mistake, I believe), I later found its user interface clunky
as I added more and more items, and I found it eventually bogged down under
the weight of even moderate relational database use. I'm glad that others
have found it useful--and will likely to continue to do so, for
light-to-moderate use--but I cannot recommend the program. Their tech
support also ignored several of my initial e-mails, further incurring my
displeasure. Nevertheless, I put it into the amalgamation below so it's not
overlooked.



To former Idea Keeper users (or those looking for powerful relational
database management on the Macintosh), here's a broad scan of the field:

Professional Grade:

Eastgate Software's Tinderbox features a nesting user interface and
extremely powerful "Agents," which one can set up structure a brainstorming
database, card catalog with notes, or even a daily online journal (blog).
Tinderbox is difficult to understand, even with its ~100-page user guide,
but it offers greater enhancement of the thesis-writing process (down to
flexible bibliographic management completely interoperable with
brainstorming and composing environments) than any other tool I've seen.
It's definitely worth a look: http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

Devon Technologies' DevonThink PE is a powerful database engine that accepts
and indexes text, RTF, MS Word, PDF, HTML, and a variety of image formats.
To a user dedicated to dumping the information they write or encounter into
it, it enables rapid searches for terms or phrases, recognizes the contexts
in which words occur, and can even suggest related documents and assist in
file categorization. Through its AntiWord Service, it even strips Word
documents of all their formatting in order to enable more fluid database
management. For a long while, Mac users have longed for a product similar to
Info Recall for the PC (http://www.inforecall.com/ ). DevonThink appears to
be it. For more information, see
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink.html .


Educational/Personal Grade:

Aquaminds' NoteTaker, which has a prettier user interface than IK, enables
one to do presentations directly from one's outlines, but lacks a lot of the
quick shortcuts that helped make IK so powerful:
http://www.aquaminds.com/index.jsp

Pocket Notes has a similar feature set to Aquaminds' NoteTaker. PocketNotes
has a more typical database-like interface and skins to beautify it, whereas
NoteTaker uses the familiar, non-PC interface of spiral notebooks.
Unfortunately, this interface trick does make NoteTaker incompatible with
WindowShade (a Mac OS X hack that restores the ability to shade windows).
PocketNotes also seems to worm more quickly yet lacks the ability to do
presentations directly from one's outlines. It's available from
http://www.pocketsw.com/PocketSoftware/pocket_notes.php


Entry-Level:

Stay At Play's Idea Knot is very similar to the no-longer-supported Idea
Keeper, though with a smaller feature set:
http://www.StayAtPlay.com/ideaknot/

Z-Write also has some similar capabilities that many writers may find
useful. Conspicuous by its absence is the ability to nest folders used to
organize content, but its unusual bookmark feature--a life-saver in longer
documents--makes this software worth a look:
http://www.stonetablesoftware.com/z-write/

Sticky Brain, billed as "Stickies on Steroids," is an entry-level relational
database with a user interface built around the Sticky/Post-It concept:
http://www.chronosnet.com/&/products/sb_product.html

Also of possible interest are Idea Spiral, http://www.midnite-liteman.com ,
and Sh-Out! My Brain, http://www.strawberryheads.com/shoutmybrain/index.html
, both still young in their development.


Concept-Mapping Software:

Strictly Concept-Mapping versions of the Tinderbox relational database and
concept drawing idea include Concept Draw's Mind Map Pro, an expensive but
useful program for amalgamating all of one's idea maps associated with the
same project into the same space (Pro edition only),
http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/mindmap/main.php ; Inspiration
Software's Inspiration, another idea mapping software program in heavy use
in schools here in the US, http://www.inspiration.com ; and a host of other
minor-league competitors, including the Omni Group's OmniGraffle, an
entry-level idea mapping software program interoperable with the company's
outliner, http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ ; Nova Mind
concept mapping software, http://www.nova-mind.com ; and the free,
cross-platform IHMC Concept Mapping software from
http://cmap.coginst.uwf.edu/ .

Finally, for those looking for a relational database simply to organize
records of what's been going on in their lives, the free MacJournal is an
award-winning software program: http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/

And for those looking for help with mapping decisions, the PC/Mac Re-Treeval
might be of interest: http://www.kudlian.demon.co.uk/products/retreeval.html