DevonThink Continued

Thanks to everyone for the amazing response to the Times essay and my subsequent post. Clearly, there is some serious pent-up interest out there in these kinds of tools. I've received so many questions and suggestions for further exploration that I haven't been able to go through them all, but a couple of key issues have emerged for me over the past 48 hours.

First, a number of people have alluded to Spotlight, Apple's new advanced search tool, arriving later this year in OS X TIger. I think Spotlight looks amazing -- check out the technology overview PDF -- but one point should be made clear: as far as I can tell, Spotlight does not to the "See Also" associative searching that DevonThink does. Spotlight is great at making rapid-fire exact text searches, and searching metadata, but it doesn't appear to have any built-in search tools for the fuzzier semantic queries. And it's the fuzzy, "see also" command that makes my DevonThink system work.

Second, there needs to be an easy way to import blog archives into DevonThink, particularly because so many blog entries are in that 50-500 word sweet spot. There are some bloggers out there whose archives I would happily import into DevonThink to supplement my own library as well. It should be easy enough to create a movable type plugin that would interface nicely with DevonThink. Lazy web -- get to work!

Finally, while I really like that DevonThink is not explicitly designed to be an academic bibliographic tool, it could use some slots for metadata that might be bibliographic in nature. I'd particularly like to be able to select a whole folder of notes and affiliate all of them with a single book/author/publisher/etc, while tagging them with different page numbers one by one. (Not unlike the way iTunes deals with individual songs belonging to the same album.) I've just been compiling the end notes for my new book this week, and it would have been very nice to just select all the DevonThink entries I was citing and have the software automatically generate the bibliography info for me. (I realize that programs like EndNote can do this very well, but I only want one tool for my notes, and EndNote doesn't do the semantic search that DevonThink does.)

I'm sending these notes to the DevonThink creators, by the way.

Comments

[John Beeler]

So Steven, what academic bibliography tool do you use to write your books? Do you just make do with DevonThink?

[apolaine]

Yes, don't you find yourself doubling up with EndNote (or similar)?

[Ned SMITH]

Thanks Steven, the Times essay was great. Very stimulating and thought provoking .

[Jeffrey]

Another hear, hear for bibliographic data in DevonThink. Or semantic searching in EndNote (or Sente or Bookends or whatever). It's depressing to have to use two tools with so much overlap, and to maintain two completely separate databases, but I comfort myself that it's just two. Everything else pretty much slides comfortably into those two buckets. At least conceptually (I'm still thunderstruck at the usefulness of DT based on your mention and am now a new user. Devon thanks you, I'm sure).

[Matthew Schinckel]

Steven,

Why don't you send an email to Apple regarding the fuzzy logic - without wanting to steal ideas from other companies (which Apple tends to do), Apple might have something like this planned for Spotlight.

[Jeremy Bushnell]

This is the way I get my old blog posts into DevonThink: I set my blog to make a monthly archive page, and I import that page into DevonThink, then select-and-drag each individual post into a DevonThink folder (which automagically makes that post into an RTF file). It's not exactly the Lazy Web at its finest, but it's worth noting that my blog (and yours, and most other ones I read) average about ten posts a month, which means doing a select-and-drag operation only ten times. This takes maybe a minute or two. One could probably import their ten favorite blogs into the database with an investment of only a half-hour at the beginning of each month.

[eric scheid]

Just took a quick look at DevonThink's website, and noted two things...

(1) a comparison of DevonThink search and Apple's Spotlight

http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/background/spotlight.php

(2) on the Service page they mention DevonThink Pro can read RSS/Atom. I would hope that it can then dump those feeds into your main database.

http://www.devon-technologies.com/service/forum.php

Fall 2004 ... they're running late.

[kstreetfriend]

The current unexplained campaign against "free speech" appears to be little more than a Madison Avenue scheme to control any discussion of the President's desire to privatize higher education.

That is, a number of for-profit colleges have faced inquiries, lawsuits and other actions calling into question the way they inflate enrollment to mislead/increase the value of their parent company's stock.

In the last year, the Career Education Corporation of Hoffman Estates, Ill., has faced lawsuits, from shareholders and students, contending that, among other things, its colleges have inflated enrollment numbers. In addition, F.B.I. agents raided 10 campuses run by ITT Educational Services of Carmel, Ind., looking for similar problems.

But there is a bigger can of worms.

Kaplan, Inc., is wholly own by the Washington Post Company. For-profit postsecondary education has turned the company around and individuals far more powerful than Martha Steward have made millions. However, there is a nominal "Watergate" styled federal court proceeding (scandal) involving campus "free speech," that could expose the administration's violation of public trust

In short, I provided the S.E.C., Department of Education, and federal courts information that appears to prove Kaplan inflated the Concord School of Law enrollment, telling investors that the “flagship” of its higher education division has as many as 600 to 1000 or more students.

I also provided evidence to prove apparent violations of sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder.

However, in an attempt to protect important icons of the Washington and New York financial/political circle, hacks have been hired to stir a free speech controversy.

But even Stan Chess (En Passant http://lawtv.typepad.com/en_passant/2004/a_question_of_l.html) innocently questioned the obvious - a clear violation of the federal securities laws.

"Kaplan's Concord School of Law says it's one of the largest law schools in the country, yet for each administration only about 25 of its graduates sit for the bar exam. What happens to the hundreds of other students in each class?"

What are you willing to do?

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[Rev. Daniel OConnell]

Fantastic article about DEVONthink. Me and about 500 of my colleagues would love to use it. I'm a Unitarian minister in St. Louis. You could imagine how useful a tool like this would be for those who write sermons or speeches! But most of us are stuck with Windows XP machines and can't really afford to convert to Macs.

Any hints about some SW for XP boxes?

(I now have a new illustration for a sermon on "envy"!)

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[Prentiss Riddle]

I hope I'm not overlooking the obvious, but can you point us to the list of "nearly a dozen" comparable applications with fast associative searching that you mention in your article?

From your wording I figured there'd be a sidebar with more info, but at least in the online edition I don't see it.

Thanks for such an intriguing article and for getting into further discussion with us here.