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CaseMap Suite revisited

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I’ve been using CaseSoft’s products for, I think, about ten years. I think of them as a suite of products – but, unlike certain other well-publicized software “suites,’ the components of the  CaseSoft – let’s say “toolset” – actually (1) work very well together, and (2) all work very well by themselves for their designated tasks. Learning curve quite comfortable, and worked well even on less-than-souped-up machines.

I’ve had less success in persuading colleagues and clients to try it; so while I’ve never had a moment of buyer’s remorse -I haven’t ever had the opportunity to try it as a collaborative tool. However, I’m current working on a project with a fairly large team, ad hoc in the sense that the team, while most of us have worked together before, not all have, and we’re geographically separated. Add to that some concerns about security – we’re looking at VPN (virtual private network) software – and will probably be using HushMail for intra-group communications – and it may take us a while to test-drive the CaseSoft toolset (which now includes CaseMap, TimeMap, TextMap, NoteMap, and DepPrep). I’ve never understood why it hasn’t caught on, not only among lawyers, but in law-enforcement and intelligence agencies). TimeMap by itself is a treasure – allows you to input events bywhatever chronologcal measure you have available (a date,  a range, a “no later than” or “no earlier than”) and produces graphic chronologies. I don’t know any other software that does this, with the possible exception of the MIT SIMILE tool, which I think is brilliant – but haven’t yet mastered.

I’ve been touting this software for years, and I paid, if memory serves, about $1K for my single-user license. And while I’m normally a proponent of free and open-source tools, this was money well-spent. I feel obliged to add the caveat that, in the interim, the firm has been acquired by Lexis-Nexis, they’ve gone through several versions that I missed (I own, love and use CaseMap 4 – but I’m going to test the current version, 8.5 for my current project), and the website doesn’t prominently note prices. (Or they’re there and I missed them).

But I’m optimistic based on my first looks, and will try to post about the current version of the CaseMap suite in the near future.

 

Awasu

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Awasu is an application (free, $29 and $79) which I learned about on the brilliant website Learning Tools Compendium.1. More about Awasuin a moment, as I work backwards from how I found it to what problem I was/am trying to solve.

I was looking for a “feed reader,” a way to centralize the sites and writers I want to keep with. My primary blog, Popular Logistics, is in large part about disaster preparedness, so there are types of events where close-to-real-time coverage is critical. I’ve found Google Reader to effectively have only two settings – “trickle” and “fire hose,” and I haven’t figured out how to mark items “read” without marking several hundred “read” at once.

Here are some examples of the types of data streams I’m trying to keep track of – with a signal-to-noise ((the “signal-to-noise” ratio is a way of describing the mixture of information one has to review and discard (“noise”) to yield information that you wration that’s bearable.

  • I’ve used Google Alerts with some success to keep track of one story, the disappearance in Iran of my dear friend, Robert Levinson. That google alert is pretty effective – but every third response seems to be about someone else named Bob or Robert Levinson. And sometimes important stories get to me as much as a week after publication, which probably just means that Google’s spiders, or “bots,” are always playing catch-up with the Internets.
  • Some sites which have RSS feeds provide no apparent native control over what part of the feed you see – in other words, all or nothing. For instance, my local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, WNYC, provides free podcasts of almost all shows, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to just get notified of stories by Bob Hennelly, WNYC’s chief political reporter. Google Alerts has helped there, but doesn’t know about a story until after it’s been transcribed (usually one day or less), plus time for the Google bots to catch up.

Read more »

 
  1. The Learning Tools Compendium is a project of Jane Hart, an educational consultant who has put a lot of thought and care into this terrific resource. Here’s a link to their 2010 Learning Tools Directory. She’s also responsible for Jane’s Learning Pick of the Day, 140 Learning, which “looks at how to use Twitter and Facebook for learning;” Social Media In Learning, and
    much more [↩]

ConnectedText: wiki-ish personal knowledge manager

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Have just started using ConnectedText, a brilliant piece of software which is hard to categorize. More on this as we get further into it. One thing that makes a strong impression is that ConnectedText has a user community that’s enthusiastic and smart, and have generated quite a number of plugins and scripts which add functionality.

A quick tour through the Connected Text forum suggests that a lot of the functionality which has been added in successive iterations has come from the user community.

Three of those users are people who’ve thought and wrote a lot about knowledge management, and their blogs and websites are really worth a look (that is, three that I found without looking very hard – as I read through the forums and evaluate ConnectedText, I’m sure I’ll find others):

Taking Note is the blog of Manfred Kuehn, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, and the author of a well-regarded 2001 biography of Immanuel Kant. Link to Professor Kuehn’s posts about ConnectedText. Professor Kuehn has also written AutoHotkey and other scripts to support Connected Text.

Here’s one user, Cal Jacobson, a software developer, and his opinion of Connected Text as one of his two choices in wiki software, the other being Wikimedia. Jacobson also maintains a script library for Connected Text.

I’ll continue to use ConnectedText — it has quite a few unique features that I like, such as Python and Ruby scripting and the ability to export everything in a self-contained Microsoft Help file.  I’d love for there to be a portable version, but due to prior problems with Chinese hackers stealing his software, Eduardo Mauro (developer of ConnectedText) has had to tie his software to a particular processor ID.  I encourage anybody interested in having a wiki for their personal use to at least give CT a shot if they can afford the $30 (US) fee 1 ; Eduardo’s support for his product has been stellar and there are certainly fewer things that can break compared to a MediaWiki + WOS solution.

NB: since that entry was written, a USB stick version has been developed, and I’m using it.

Link to Mr. Jacobson’s posts in the category “Connected Text.”

For Linux users, Mr. Jacobson also has a post explaining the WINE workaround to allow use of ConnectedText in Linux.

Third, Glenn J. Coulthard, a professor of at Okanagan College, British Columbia, and a doctoral candidate at Purdue. His post Academic Research using ConnectedText has a 10-minute tutorial.

ConnectedText may have a (relatively) small userbase compared, say, to WordPress. But realizing the intensity and intelligence of users actively supporting the application was enough to get me to pay $79 USD2  and for the USB version. Which I’m now testing on some research I’m doing now, and will shortly test on some existing datasets from older matters. Hope to have a useful post about this promising program, and some screen shots, in the near future.

 
  1. The current single-computer license fee is $40 [↩]
  2. The ConnectedText pricing structure ranges from single-computer ($39.95),  to single-user/multiple computers ($69.95), USB stick, i.e. take-it-anywhere, or to any machine (79.95) and $119.95 for the combination of USB-stick and multiple computer licenses. None of these restrictions, so far as I can tell, limit your right to make backup copies. [↩]

Freeware Genius: Four non-hierarchical Note-Taking tools

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We learned about Freeware Genius from the ever-useful Lifehacker, my first stop in solving software problems. In trying to test as many freeware, shareware and reasonably priced information collection, knowledge management, organizational and GTD tools as possible, Freeware Genius has been invaluable.

Four interesting, non-hierarchical freeware notes programs reviews

We’ve started testing Cintanotes and MindRaider. Both are quite promising. MindRaider is quite promising, is the most full-featured – and may have the steepest learning curve. It’s the product of Martin Dvorak  (blog here; his personal page here; yesterday I had in hand a list of some of the amazing software he’s developed, and I’ll dig it up and post in in an update)

It’s my hope to develop several test datasets which replicate an actual case – I may take an existing case file and substitute fictional names and identifying details – and use it to test each piece of software. Stay tuned.

Thanks again to Freeware Genius and, of course, Lifehacker.


 

Debrief Notes

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Debrief Notes (available in Basic/free, Standard/$29.95, and Professional/$39.95 versions) is a note-taking application that makes it easy to search notes, assign them to categories (cases, clients, projects). From Idealign Software. An easily navigable hierarchy of

Debrief Hierarchy Readily apparent use
Notebook Top hierarchy, so lends itself to Client, Matter or Client.Matter
Folder either Matter, or Issue/Project
Note For an individual event, telephone conversation, idea, document, document or data set

Absent the limitations infra – it’s got a well-featured WYSIWYG editor – text controls include

  • text size
  • bold, italic, underline
  • strikethrough (for many of us, important, particularly when sharing drafts, etc.
  • font color
  • bulleted lists
  • change case (toggles through ALL UPPER, all lower, and Initial Capital Format (I think in MS-Word land, that’s “Title Case”

Other assets

  • Loads rapidly
  • has a daily notepad which I find myself using for unexpected incoming phone calls and short-term to-do lists

Limitations of the free version (which I’m using, having not gotten around to using Debrief during the thirty-day trial period):

  • Not (apparently) possible to use html (external link) in a note
  • Or to internally link notes
  • No numbered (or lettered, or other sequential outlining or listing software)

However, I believe that some of these limitations are resolved in the paid versions. Features comparison here.

The Basic edition – reviewed here – is free – the Standard is $29.95, and the Professional  Version $39.95. Substantial price breaks for bulk purchases at 10, 100, 500, 1000.  I haven’t tested this yet – but my suspicion is that it would work well for collaboration, using a network, VPN, or service like DropBox to synchronize files.

Download link here.

Idealign has, I think, made something very useful here; when we’ve had a chance to ante up for the Standard and Pro versions we’ll review them. Debrief may well catch on and become widely used.