John Sechrest wrote: (01)
> If my file system were a wiki, I would have found
> the writing by now.
>
I recently stumbled upon the Literary Machine, from a link on Purdue's
OWL site. This product may well have eased the retrieval of those thoughts. (02)
I'm not sure I know how to describe it, maybe somewhere between
NoteCards and Goldmine. Freeware but Windows only. Here's some info from
the home page, http://www.literarymachine.com/ (03)
----- (04)
<meta name="keywords" content="PIM mind concept mapping brainstorming creative
creativity get published relational database literary machine research writing
writer author authoring freeware free software productivity information manager
management desktop organizer compose composing outline outliner outlining word
processing Sommestad gunnar sommestad eax LM Professional Pro 2000 LM2000
thinking memory Wittgenstein cognitive fuzzy knowledge ebook innovation
semantic semantics technical thesaurus non-linear hypertext hypermedia synonym
homonym">
<!-- Have you ever wanted a way to organize all of those random thoughts that
pop into your mind throughout the day? Do you need a place to put all those
pieces of information that float around your desk? --> (05)
and... (06)
/Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit./
— T.S. Eliot (07)
*The Literary Machine* is a one-of-a-kind program that takes PIM in a
new direction to make it a creativity and productivity tool as well as
an archive. It was conceived as a tool to help writers with the most
difficult part of the job — conquering the blank page and shaping a vast
amount of material into a coherent, organic whole. To that end LM
incorporates a unique set of compositional, reference, and outlining
tools. Writers and researches chisel-out a document in LM before porting
it into their favorite word processor or desktop publisher for polishing. (08)
The core of The Literary Machine is a relational database for random
information (e.g., research, notes, and archived writing) based on the
Borland Database Engine. Information (including sounds, text, and
pictures) is stored on electronic note cards marked by keywords that can
be combined to form hybrid concepts. The system thus embeds information
in a three-dimensional keyword matrix that illuminates the relationships
among different items of information stored at different times in
different contexts. It thus serves as a textual concept-mapper or
concept-tracker and a brainstorming tool. (09)
External information (e.g., Web pages and local files) can be integrated
with the database and displayed and searched from within LM. Unlike
other information managers, however, LM is optimized for processing
information, not for merely storing vast amounts of it. So it occupies a
different niche in the market. (010)
See for yourself how LM enables mind and machine to interact in unique
and powerful ways. That's because both databases work the same way. To
find out what you can do with this groundbreaking productivity tool, see
this introduction to LM 2000 <http://www.sommestad.com/lm2000.htm>
freeware or to LM Pro <http://www.sommestad.com/lmp.htm>. (011)
------- (012)
Some nice demos here: http://www.literarymachine.com/LM_3_3.htm. You may
want to check out #4 on the outlining capability. Outlines are overlayed
on the data, so one can have as many version/views as is desired.
All-in-all a pretty cool looking product. No collaboration features that
I see, but I've seen several folks ask for just such a tool. (013)
Regards, (014)
Matt (015)
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