InfoSelect 7.0 adds more information capture capabilities, numerous new features

By Julianne Gilmore

MicroLogic recently introduced a version 7 of InfoSelect, its flagship software program that combines the best features of a word processor, a free-form database and a personal information manager to capture and organize many different kinds of text-based information. InfoSelect 7.0 is ideal for users who deal with lots of information. It helps to you do three things really well: grab information, organize it, and search it.

InfoSelect's easy to use two-pane interface enables you to organize to suit your needs. The left panel, called the selector, contains headings for your notes and content, which can be arranged in a hierarchical, outline-like format. Each heading or item in the selector corresponds to a document window that is displayed in the larger right hand panel of the program's display.

Notes: The basic building block of InfoSelect

InfoSelect's simple layout invites the user to create topics and begin to compile notes. The information they contain can come in almost any digital form - documents, spreadsheets, databases, grids, forms, graphics, photos, Web pages, emails, posts from newsgroups, scanned images. The right pane of the screen is the information itself - the note. (The area is the "workspace" because that is where the displayed note is edited.)

Notes made up of text are likely to be the most common type. Text notes can be as short as a word, or as long as necessary - a chapter in a book, say. The word processing capabilities of InfoSelect are adequate, but that is not the only way to get text into InfoSelect. One addicting feature is the "transporter" which allows the user to mark text in another application or from the Internet and move it to InfoSelect with one click of a mouse (or hotkey combination). Version 7 has rudimentary tools to deal with images, cropping, resizing, transposing - enough tools to help you get many tasks done to your image without resorting to a full-blown image processing program.

Multiple tools for organizing your information and knowledge

At any point, you can change your organizing scheme and rearrange your notes, with very little effort, much as one would sort through note cards or change an outline. As you drag a heading to a new location in the selector, the note that is attached to it follows.

The selector is not the only path for organizing notes. Rather than one single note occupying the right pane of the screen, you can frame notes and move them around much as you would index cards on a desk space. You can pin notes to any part of the screen (always on top when InfoSelect is active).

The outline format of the selector is only the first possible way of organizing. Notes (and remember these can be graphics, web pages, calendars, spreadsheets, forms, databases) can be dealt with in numerous ways in the selector:

• notes can be joined or divided;
• notes can be moved around in a topic or from to topic;
• notes can be sorted into piles (called hotspots);
• notes can be classified under tabs with multiple tabs per note;
• notes can be zipped off as e-mails;
• notes can be linked, one to another to another, with those links being in far distant proximity in the selector;
• notes can be sent to new files;
• notes can be colored - either the note title in the selector or the background of the note itself;
• notes can be marked as to do items or with checkboxes.

Powerful search capabilities

I believe the ability to search text has always been the compelling attraction to InfoSelect. Text search is blazingly fast because all of your InfoSelect notes are stored in your computer's memory. InfoSelect supports both simple keyword searches, as well as powerful Boolean searches (multiple search terms, used with and/or/not, etc.) Search is also possible on the size of your notes or the dates they were revised. The scope of the search can be limited to caption or to text or to only portions of the notes in the selector. You can even search for formatted text or colored text or your Internet cache. Finally, various note types (images, databases, forms, calendars, ticklers, to do items can be singled out for display. These advanced search capabilities make it easy to find your needle in a haystack - a single nugget of information - regardless of its location within your InfoSelect file.

What's new in version 7?

Version 7 contains numerous new features and enhancements to existing capabilities. The net effect is that you can store more of the daily nuggets of information you work with on a daily basis in a centralized desktop repository -- a personal knowledge base, if you will. New features include:

• An integral Web browser
• The ability to access Internet newsgroups via InfoSelect.
• The ability to export your InfoSelect files to HTML Web page presentations
• The ability to edit images saved in your notes within InfoSelect (including cropping, magnifying, adjusting their quality and reducing their memory size)

One neat new tool in version 7 is the "selector grid," which enables you to create simple tables in the selector view. Each row in the table is a topic which can contain additional text-based information. It is ideal for tracking clients or employees.

InfoSelect also features an integral spell checker, which checks your text as you write it, and underlines misspelled words in red, a la Microsoft Word. Considering InfoSelect's strengths as an industrial-strength tool for writing longer documents, such as books and business plans, this feature was probably overdue.

For a complete listing of InfoSelect 7's newest features, please visit the MicroLogic Web site.

Information: Grab now, organize later

Information capture with InfoSelect 7 is so quick and easy that the temptation is to grab now, organize later (the virtual equivalent of piles of notes). Again, the powerful search capabilities let you postpone organizing the information until it is needed. Then it is easy enough to find the spreadsheet, the Web site, the downloaded article, the relevant emails, the idea notes and gather them together.

Easy capture, easy organization, and easy search - these capabilities are only useful if done in service to some purpose. InfoSelect provides the tools for practical ends. It can manage email, it can manage lists of things to do along with calendars and ticklers, or it can manage contacts. But primarily, InfoSelect manages information. Whether or not you should try it depends on whether your critical focus is gathering, analyzing and using information and knowledge.

Software specialized for email does a better job on email, and so on. But, if the content of the e-mail includes discussion of issues, if on-going projects need research and thoughtful actions, if contacts have different and varied kinds of material relevant to each one, or if you need to write reports that are still unformed and need structure, then InfoSelect is your tool!

How I use InfoSelect

I have used InfoSelect ever since it premiered as TornadoNotes in the mid 80's. I began using it to keep research notes and random thoughts for projects I was managing. Searching was so fast and easy that I began keeping phone numbers there too. As the software capabilities expanded, so did my reliance. I started using the calendar, I started using the databases; I started using the Internet features. Now my whole life is in InfoSelect! At least everything is in one place, and I know I can find it.

It seems that new users do not have much problem becoming familiar with the basics of InfoSelect. It is however, an incredibly flexible and therefore complex program. I often find useful to study the help section and try out many of the features - just for fun - to see how I can exploit them in more serious tasks. Each feature allows me to organize differently, to see new patterns, and therefore to think in new ways.

Support for InfoSelect

As much as I love using InfoSelect 7, the program can sometimes be quirky. Long text notes (notes over 5000 characters) don't stand up to heavy editing and formatting without screen writing difficulties (Text isn't lost, and the view corrects itself over time. Notes of any size that don't undergo extensive editing don't have this problem. Besides, by time you reach the word-crafting stage, you do not need InfoSelect!) The user interface suffers from the multitude of tools - not the tools themselves, but the requirements to carry out various actions are sometimes inconsistent and many times users are led through so many confirmation boxes that the fleeting thought that one was trying to capture or organize has long since gone.

If you need help using this powerful program, I recommend the InfoSelect discussion group at Yahoo Groups. It offers helpful usage tips and ideas, and answers to technical questions. It is a pity that Micro Logic, the creators of InfoSelect, does not support a user discussion or idea exchange, newsletters, or Internet tutorials. InfoSelect has so many tools that it would be impossible for any user to begin to fathom more than a small sub-set of potential applications.

Conclusion

The great irony of InfoSelect 7 is that the more you use it, the more useful it becomes. True, all software becomes more useful as the user becomes more skilled, but word processors are only as smart as the user who wrote the document. InfoSelect, over time, builds an accessible knowledge base, a reference library that can be organized and re-organized in any number of ways and for evolving purposes. It is almost as if the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

InfoSelect is state-of-the-art "computer assisted remembering."

Published on 1/16/2003

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Summary InfoSelect 7 offers new features and functionality that make it even more compelling as your personal knowledge base - the place where you can store the myriad bits of information you encounter on a daily basis.
Learn more about InfoSelect 7

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