DEVONThink anmeldelse (engelsk) & tips
Følgende er en anmeldelse af DEVONThink Pro Office, jeg postede i går på mit midlertidige nordic-ee-users.com ExpressionEngine site. Anmeldelsen fortæller lidt om det PDF-baserede blad jeg laver - download første nummer her (1,9 MB, PDF) - der omhandler ExpressionEngine CMS'et, og går så i dybden med DEVONThink Pro Office bagefter.
Anmeldelsen er på engelsk, men efter den følger nogle kommentarer jeg skrev i denne Facebook tråd, (kan du ikke læse den pga. "venne-begrænsninger" findes en oversat version nederst i denne anmeldelse) der kan være af interesse for alle der - som jeg og mange andre - har prøvet DEVONThink og ikke rigtig har kunnet komme i gang med det. Men det ER altså genialt, hvis man har mange informationer af alle mulige typer, som man gerne vil holde styr på. Så jeg håber denne anmeldelse samt mine kommentarer og links, kan få alle jer der har prøvet og stået af igen, til at give DEVONThink en chance mere. Tro mig, det er det værd når man først lige er kommet i gang...
Publishing a Magazine with DEVONThink
The ExpressionEngine Magazine (please note: temporary site) is a free PDF-based magazine, that I publish on my own using just Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and DEVONThink Pro Office. The magazine has been on hiatus for a month or so, because of me getting the flu and other things getting in the way.
But it's still my baby, and I hate that I have not even finished issue two, of what proved to be a very popular idea and a wonderful endeavor. But sometimes things can combine and conspire against you, to put all well laid-out plans to rest.
Creating a magazine = chaos
One positive about laying in bed with the flu though, was that it gave me the time to compile all information surrounding the production of a magazine, into one place, one ingenious place it turned out - DEVONThink Pro Office.
Because it's not just laying the magazine out in InDesign, that's the easy part. You need to keep track of...
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Are mails written and answered?
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Who's writing what article?
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Who runs what ads
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Who makes the ads
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Have the ads and articles been submitted to me?
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In time?
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...and a thousand things more, that you don't count on when starting such a project.
As you can see, it takes a huge amount of coordination to publish such a magazine. Because we have multiple authors, some who will run ads, and some who would rather run ads in a later issue. Some authors will not make the deadline, because they have their day jobs, that are a bit more important, than an article in a free magazine. Some authors suddenly find the time anyway, and we need to squeeze their article into a nearly finished magazine.
Then there is myself, that write most of the articles (in english, not my native tongue, so all copy needs to be checked and checked again), and combine the whole thing in InDesign plus do the graphics, some of the ads and finally publish to PDF.
There is actually so much work surrounding the magazine, before you even get to put the first article into InDesign, that we have no set deadlines for coming issues yet. And probably will not until issue 3 or 4!
Turning to DEVONThink
As you can see, it took me by surprise how much work there is in creating such a thing, so I turned to a tool I use with all my web development projects, personal finances, health-info and much more, DEVONThink Pro Office.
DEVONThink literally contains my whole life, so it was only natural to integrate the magazine with DEVONThink.
Click for larger screenshot...
What is DEVONThink? Freedom!
DEVONThink Pro is hard to explain. It's sort of a database meets the Mac OS X Finder, even if that description is nowhere near what it really is. Because "what it really is" is really hard to describe. You kinda have to try it.
There are trial-versions and screencasts available on the DEVON Technologies website, and I encourage you to try it out and see the screencasts.
Because DEVONThink is by far the best information-management system I've ever seen, tried or used. If you have projects with - or your daily life includes - text, word-processing, PDF, images, spreadsheets, time-tables, well any kind of file actually, and you perhaps even need to share this with your co-workers or family, DEVONThink is your best friend! Or will be, when you get the hang of it.
Everything can be structured and viewed in almost any way you want. There are seven different ways of viewing your data, you can categorize everything into groups (folders), and/or you can tag your data and documents any way you want.
Actually, in DEVONThink, tags are folders, and folders also become tags when they are created. It's a strange concept at first, but it just means your folder-names are always automatically made into tags for easy searching later. And when tagging an item, that tag can be viewed as a folder, containing all other items with the same tag - pure genius in my book, and you never have to think about the concept, or use its possibilities if you don't want. But if you do categorize your data using groups, tags or both, it will become very easy to find your data later on. But more on that in the comments later...
With the iOS version (App Store link), you can even have your data with you on the road, and edit them to be synced back when you get home.
Another really useful feature, is that you can share any DEVONThink database on the local network (LAN or WAN), and you can even use the built-in web-server to serve your data on the web or an intranet. This requires the Pro Office version of DEVONThink!
The competition?
All in all, I cannot recommend DEVONThink enough. I've tried all the competition out there (Yojimbo, Evernote, OmniFocus, and all the others) and I personally can't work with any other "system" than DEVON's.
Sure, it's a bit strange here and there, but there's thought behind every feature, and being able to literally have my entire life - personal and professional - in a collection of nine databases, that can all be open - in the same interface, at the same time - without anything feeling "separate" is amazing.
Immense flexibility
You can have everything in one database, or create more for projects, personal, family, work and so on, and treat them as separate databases. Or you can have 30 open all at once, and make it seem like it's all just one big database of organized files and folders - now that's flexibility!
Pricing
DEVONThink comes in three variants, each one offering more features.
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DEVONThink Personal at $49.95 only lets you have one database, but besides that it has 90% of the other versions features.
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DEVONThink Pro at $79,95 lets you have all the databases you want, can read more file-formats, has tables and full AppleScript and Automator support.
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DEVONThink Pro Office at $149.95 is for the paperless office (that can now finally actually be done, with this software!) because of its scanner and OCR support. Superior OCR by the way, that scans documents and makes them text-searchable while retaining the look of the scanned page. So an invoice will look exactly as when you pulled it from the envelope, but its text will be selectable, searchable and will basically act like normal text will. Awesome, I just had to say it, it's really impressive.
Pro Office also has e-mail integration, so you can handle and archive your e-mail directly from your e-mail client. Using Apple Mail for example, you can directly export to DEVONThink Pro Office and keep the mail or conversation there. The Pro version also has more limited e-mail integration, where you drag the mail from your e-mail app to DEVONThink, which is still very useful.
You can read all about the different versions at DEVON's site here - go and get a demo-version, you and your brain will thank you! http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html
FACEBOOK TALK
I had an interesting question from my friend David on Facebook. He had tried DEVONThink many times, but never seemed to get friendly with it, and I don't doubt that is how many feel when trying DEVONThink for the first time(s). I felt the same way, until I figured out that you don't need to start out categorizing and managing everything from the get-go. Just start pouring in data in the default database, create some groups when it seems appropriate, and then move on to separating into different databases and grouping and tagging more rigorously when you have the time.
Here's my advice to David, who wondered why he had to spend so much time sorting and categorizing his data, when using DEVONThink:
I agree with you, but you can actually use DEVONThink any way you want, kinda like the Mac OS X Finder or iPhoto which may be a better example.
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You can have everything in one database, and then just search for what you need.
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Or you can sort things out in folders (Groups in DEVONThink) but still in the same database (note that it's only Pro and Pro Office that actually allow for multiple databases).
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Or you can end up having multiple databases where everything is sorted, grouped and tagged.
And here is where the resemblance with iPhoto is good, because I think most people start at 1 above, then move onto 2 slowly and then, when they have the time, sit down and do 3, which at that point won't take more than an hour or two.
One last thing is DEVONThink's kinda strangely named "See also & Classify" which is a sort of "auto-sorter" that starts out with a pile of files you choose, and then files and archives them into appropriate and related groups and tags. DEVONThink reads all the contents of the supported file-formats, and by indexing that information along with looking at how you yourself classify and sort your data and documents, can do an amazingly intelligent job of sorting things for you. And it's all undo-able of course, but it can be a big help.
Conclusion
So to sum up, give DEVONThink a second (or fifth) chance, and see if it does not seem a little less daunting, now that you know a bit more about it. Ohh, and besides Joe Kisell's book on DEVONThink, Google is always your friend, there's lots of great tips and tricks for DEVONThink out there - here's a few:
Now it's your turn, go get it...
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