Ask Slashdot: Life Organization With Free Software? 133
BigZee writes "For many years, I've used a page-a-day diary as both a planner and a method for taking notes. While not perfect, it's proven to be an approach that's worked fairly well for me. Conscious of the limitations, I want this to become more electronic. In principle, I want to be able to use my Nexus 7 for this function. There are some limitations: My workplace uses MS Outlook. However, I am not able to use Evernote (or similar) on my workplace machine. This limits possible integration along the lines proposed with GTD. What I want is to be able to take notes that are organized by date as well as being integrated to a calendar (preferably Google). Additionally, I want to be able to prioritize my work along lines similar to GTD. I'm not averse to spending money for the right software but prefer to use free software where possible. Can anyone suggest what could be used?" The above-linked Wikipedia page lists some relevant Free software as well as closed-source options. If you use such organizing software, though, how do you use it, and how well do you find it works?
OneNote (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you need the source code?
Just slap Microsoft OneNote [google.com] to your Nexus 7 and be done with it. For your work PC, it comes bundled in MS Office.
Re:Or, stay low tech ... (Score:3, Interesting)
By all means, apply technology as you see fit. But for some things, many of us have found that old fashioned pen and paper is still superior. Everything else is a temporary solution which will eventually fail on you or go away completely.
I good middle ground is when the page is full take a picture and put it on evernote which will do OCR (so long as you don't write too bad) and then you have an index of all your notes somewhere.
Re:Or, stay low tech ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found that over the years I've know people who have tried variations on that.
Eventually it becomes something they deem too cumbersome, or the technology just doesn't work, or any number of things.
Me, I just keep using old-school lab books. Unless I lose them in a fire, I can usually track down something quickly enough to not bother with anything fancier. It also allows me to have my notes be fairly unstructured, include diagrams, and lots of other things I don't always find a good analog for in digital things.
Then again, I'm too damned old and cranky to be too much of a slave to technology when I can avoid it. Eventually, with a lot of technology I find it simply more work than going with pen and paper.
Re: OneNote (Score:5, Interesting)
Tiddlywiki (Score:4, Interesting)
TiddlyWiki [tiddlywiki.com] is a self-contained app stored in an HTML file that you can store on a USB, Dropbox, or elsewhere. People have written GTD add-ons for it and it is easy to write your own customizations. There is an Android app to help run it on Android systems and the new version uses HTML 5 with option to use node.js to make it even more powerful.
I use Zim plus Dropbox (Score:5, Interesting)
I use the Zim Desktop Wiki http://zim-wiki.org/ [zim-wiki.org] plus Dropbox.
Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control.
If you need version control, Zim supports Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial as backends.
Zim is not network aware, so I just keep its ~/Notes files in my Dropbox folder, install that and the desktop Linux/Windows/OSX Zim client as needed and I'm good to go.
Unfortunately, there is no smartphone version of Zim, but I have little need for a smartpone app of this sort. I do email myself info as needed to integrate into Zim later.
Conspicuously absent (Score:4, Interesting)
The first time I got an Android, I was utterly appalled that there was no note editing app in the base install.
I went looking for combined note/voice-note/picture/calander organizing apps. Most had too many strings attached (specific cloud-service sync options, or whatnot.) All of them lacked the ability to quickly procrastinate a task. You'd think that would be an obvious feature, but no. I went back to just remembering stuff with wetware. By the time my wetware starts to wear out, hopefully there will be something suitable.