I realize I am a Devon Think groupie, but the news that a new version is in the work for this year has me anxiously awaiting the release. In my opinion it is the best, “brain in a box” software out there. My largest complaint with Devon is the interface (it is rather dated an un-Mac like), but never fear reworking the UI is one of the upgrades.

P.S.: I ended up with some more Evernote Beta invites, let me know if you still want one (leave a comment, or email me).

I posted here before about the importance of Metadata, and how to keep research organized. While I still think Devon Think or Google Desktop is the way to go, there is another choice for Windows Users (see I am not Mac only): Tag and Facet. I haven’t tried it out, but if you are looking for a MetaData solution give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Related is Tagsahoy a site that lets you search all your online tags at once. This way you can search your tags at del.icio.us and flickr at the same time.

One of the other essential “tools” to navigating the internet is Bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are little buttons you can add to your browser window that will let you act on or change the information you are seeing. What do I mean by this? First take a look at the picture below:

These are my collection of bookmarklets, some are grouped together in folders and some that I use most frequently are by themselves. So, say for example I am reading a web page and I want to add it to Devon. I just click the one labeled Devon, and it is added to Devon. If I want to add a link to del.icio.us I simply click the one labeled pukka and it is instantly added to my account. (Del.icio.us has their own bookmarklet for this, but I use Pukka to handle more than one account, and to make my task easier.)

Honestly there is an array of possibilities here. I am not going to go into them all or offer an lengthy explanation of how this all works, because someone else already has. Searching the Internet has a post complete with audio and slide capture that runs down all of this. So, click over and take a look. You can also see the wikipedia article which has a list at the end of places where you can get these. They are super simple to use, basically you just drag them into the bar on your browser window. Find the bookmarklet you want (see Wikipedia article for places to get them) and just drag them into the browser window. See picture below:

What I did think would be useful is to run down which bookmarklets I use, as this tends to be informed by “academic interests.” (From left to right—see first picture above.) Continued after the jump.

• Highlighter: This one brings up a pop up window into which I type a search term and it highlights all of the words that match that term on a given page. This is better than find as I don’t have to keep click through to find the next one.
• Zap Plug-Ins: As it says, “zaps” plug-ins. So if you are viewing a site that has audio or video content that you want to stop from running, click this and it disables anything that needs a plug-in. This works just on the current page, so is easier then disabling it for all the pages you are viewing.
• Zap Images:: Same as above, but just gets rid of all the images on a page, leaving just the text.
• Pukka: As I mentioned above, this one posts to delicious. If you are not on a Mac, or don’t need the power this application offers, just get the bookmarklet offered by deli.cio.us.
• achack post: This is a WordPress specific tool (WordPress is the program used to run this blog). Clicking on this one opens a window to write a post to Academhack linked to the current page. So, if I see something I want to post to Academhack on another site, I just click this one.
• Devon: This folder contains to bookmarklets (yes you can group bookmarklets into folders), one to add a bookmark to Devon with the current web site, the other to add an archive of the current site to Devon. This is super useful if you are using Firefox or any browser that doesn’t allow you to Take Rich Note.
• Search Other: This folder contains bookmarklets for yahoo, altavista, google etc. Basically if I run a search on one of these for a term, say “Grilled Cheese,” I can click these bookmarklets and see the search result for the same term, but in a different search engine. I don’t use this a great deal as I use Devon Agent mostly, but they are still nice to have handy.
• Internet Tools: This is where most of my important ones are. There are eight in this folder:
  • Zap Colors-gets rid of all the colors on a page, makes it easier to read
  • Page Color to White-sometimes the above doesn’t work, and then I use this one. You know those annoying web sites you can’t read because of their color choices, this fixes that. And also you can zap the colors before selecting the text to copy and paste it elsewhere so you do not have blue and purple text. (Again very useful for Devon.)
  • Change Text Color-Like the above, but allows one to change a specific text color rather than just to get rid of them, or make black and white.
  • Bug Me Not-avoid entering passwords on free registration sites.
  • List Email Links-rather than searching around on a site for the email link to contact the person, click this bookmarklet and get the link quickly.
  • Open All Links-Opens in tabs all pages to which the current page links.
  • List All Links-Like the above, but a list rather than opening them in tabs.
  • Reveal Password-Sometime my browser automatically fills in a password for a site I visit, but I forget what the password I have been using is. Click this to see the password (doesn’t always work, but often enough that it is useful).
• Tiny Url: This takes a long URL and makes it short. Useful for emailing links which are really long. Use this which will shorten the link length—say for example Amazon.
• co.mments: I use this to track all the places I have commented on others blogs. Supremely Useful! See this Gearfire post about co.mments. (Although the post uses a firefox plugin rather than a bookmarklet.)
• Email Link: Okay so this one doesn’t appear in the picture, but that is because Omni has this feature built in, but when I use Firefox I have this bookmarklet in the bar, makes it easy to email someone a link to the current page.

Find a tutor: Lifehacker post on a service that helps you find a tutor, or if you are a tutor find a student. As of now the service only works Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Just as instructive though is the discussion about the post, and the concerns about this type of social networking.

A Good Homepage for Students: Gearfire features this post about a website called Schoolr which makes a good choice as a homepage. Basically Schoolr comibines searches for Google, Wikipedia, dictionary, translations, and citations all in one easy to find space. Personally my browser is always open so a “homepage” is fairly meaningless, and I use Quicksilver to conduct all my searches, but this is probably a good place to send students.

Web 2.0 for Educators: Teaching Hacks, one of the best websites on using tech in the classroom, points to how to find his extended document on ways to use Web 2.0 in the classroom space. This document is 50 pages long and contains many an idea. It is mainly aimed at K12. You can download it directly from his site, or view it online at Scribd, a sort of YouTube for documents.

Zotero: For those using Zotero, you might want to check out this post.

PC Note Taking: For those who read this blog regularly, you already know that one of my essential programs is Devon Think, but honestly I am trying to include tips here for PCers as well. So you might want to check out this lifehacker post which covers EverNote. Evernote is free, but check out the lifehacker discussion on this post to get a run down of other options, and/or the benefits of upgrading to the paid version of EverNote.

Searching the Web: And my best discovery of the week is Searching the Internet, a blog that is about “searching the internet” (as if the name wasn’t clear). The author has posts covering science searches, image searches, how to find safe pages, and various search engines. Definitely worth a look. I am forever stressing to my students the importance of using multiple search engines, and for that this site is tremendously useful.

Here’s my situation: I work in education policy, which means I spend a lot of time reading long-ish reports and writing syntheses, papers, policy briefings, etc. What I often find is that Report A will contain potentially useful info about a variety of topics (we’ll call those topics X, Y and Z). Report B will contain info about topics V, W and X; Report C about W, X and Y – you get the idea.

What I would love is software that allows me to take notes on such a way that, when I need to write a paper on Topic Z, I can easily find all the notes I’ve taken on that topic, rather than having to look laboriously through the notes from Report A for info on topic Z, then the notes from Report B, etc. I would assume this sort of software exists, but I’ve asked around and none of my colleagues have any recommendations. I’ve looked online, of course, but without real world recommendations it’s difficult to know where to start or even what exactly I should be looking for. And when I asked an academic I know, she suggested 6×4 notecards – not exactly what I have in mind.

Re platforms, I use mac at home, but, alas, use a pc at work, so my first priority would be finding software for the latter (though I would like to have it at work and home).

Good question, I think I have an answer, or several answers, and as I have been wanting to write about “metadata” or “tagging” files this gives me a good opportunity.

Meta-explanation

First let me reframe the issue, and explain why you would want to do something like what is being asked here. Say for example you are doing research on 20th Century Literature, and you have just finished reading an excellent article that discusses David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and William Vollman, all through the lens of Foucault. (Does such a paper exist? I just made this up, but bonus points for anyone who finds such a thing.) Under a typical filing system you could place the paper under Pynchon, or under Wallace, but not both, and what to do about Foucault and Vollman? You could create four copies of the document and file it under each, or just create small documents that say see ” (Insert Name of Article) located in Wallace, place the document in Wallace and file extra small documents in the other locales. Or you could create a card catalog for your computer—personally I think both sound pretty futile. The problem here stems from organizing computer files as if they were in a file cabinet, when they do not have to be.

I think on the internet over the past year or so we have started to see a change in this as things are no longer necessarily organized in a hierarchy, but instead placed in relation. If you think about it this is how deli.cio.us operates. Things aren’t just placed in one bin, but multiple bins and you can see a great deal just by looking at the bins.

The problem comes in when you move this stuff to your own hard drive and start to organize your own data. You might want a mix of the file system, but be able to still tag files.

The Solution

The easiest way to solve this problem is to use something like Devon or Yojimbo or for the PC as some users have recommended, OneNote. Obviously I am a fan of this method, although it does have its drawbacks. For one it is not cross platform, and you have to be rigorous about always using the application. These are also not free.

What this emailer is really looking for is a way to tag, or use metadata that is searchable. Now there are a few solutions I have for this problem.

You can add the metadata, or the tags into the document. Let’s take the same example as above. You could just use something that will search inside all of your documents (more on this later) for Pynchon. But the problem with this is that you will get all your documents that have the word Pynchon, and you really only want the documents you “tagged” as having to do with Pynchon. The solution to this is to create a tagging system with a prepend. I use a tagging system on my hard drive, and what I do is every tag starts with an “&.” Back to the above example, you would open up the document, and on the last line of the document add, &Pynchon, &Wallace, &Vollman, &Foucault. Now when you search inside all of your documents instead of searching for Pynchon you search for &Pynchon, thus returning only the documents you have tagged with “&Pynchon.” Now this has a few drawbacks, namely that you have to be able to search inside the document, and you have to be able to edit the document, (what if you get a .pdf, or have saved a webpage, this can get a bit cumbersome). This will work though as you move the documents across platforms though, the tags will stay when you move the document from a PC to a Mac.

If you are on a Mac—a better way

If you are on a Mac this is actually really easy, spotlight has the ability to add tags/metadata to any file, and you can then search for it. Lucky for me, someone for more knowledgeable has already done an extensive write-up on how to do this, and make it easy. So I can just link to it here. This is an excellent five part series where Nick lays out all the tools, tricks, methods and philosophy of getting this done. This is really a thorough post, complete with screencasts. So if you are a Mac user and you want to tag your files, this will do the trick. Start here, and then go to Part 2, Part 3, Part Four, and finally The Wrap Up. This should pretty much cover how to tag files. And if you are only going to work on a Mac, and don’t want to use something like Devon or Yojimbo this is the way to go. It can even be done for free, or there are some cheap apps that Nick features that makes it even easier.

If you are on a PC

First, if you are on a PC just go buy a Mac (just kidding, please don’t send me hateful emails, I really am just kidding). As the emailer states, this is probably a problem many in academia face as you are given PCs by the workplace. Windows doesn’t have the extensive search capabilities of spotlight so you have to work around this problem. One easy solution is to get Google Desktop this will allow you to search the files on your computer as if they were google pages. If you want to use this check out Lifehacker for some help. The one problem with this solution is it still does not allow you to tag files as the above model wants, only search within them.

If you want to “tag” files on a PC you need Copernic Desktop. This program is also free, and will allow you to do one thing that Google Desktop will not. That is search inside the Properties Pop-up for a file, which allows you to employ the tagging system. to get this done first read the series of posts above from Nick on the Apple Blog. You don’t need to get all of the tools, but rather his general philosophy, at the very least read the first one. Now when you get a new document, place it on your desktop. Before you file it, right click open the properties=>summary window, and look for “keywords.” In the keywords field place your tags, for example &Pynchon, &Foucault. It is crucial to use the prepend & (or whatever symbol/system you choose) for if you just put keywords in without this prepend you are going to have trouble distinguishing as per above. Copernic will search in the keywords field (at least that is what I am told-I have not actually tried this), but Google Desktop will not. Since Copernic it should not be too much of a problem to get it installed on your work computer.

Closing Thought(s)

I think the more information becomes digital, and one tries to manage said information, metadata will become evermore crucial for handling research. I still think something like Devon or Yojimbo is the way to go, but the above should work, and unless you have everything in your database manager it is useful to employ a tagging system for your other files (this is what I do).

Thoughts? Questions? anyone have something to add? (Post in the comments.)

No secret here, Devon is one of my favorite applications. One of my top can’t live without, reasons to work on a Mac programs. One of the essential features is it’s ability to capture and store data from the web. This has been relatively easy to do if you are working in Safari or other WebKit based browsers, but not so easy if you are someone who uses Firefox or Camino. But now there is a solution for those who want to easily store pages in Devon and not give up using Firefox. So here is the rundown of two ways to capture web info from Devon.

Using Take Rich Note

(This Only Works if you are using Safari, OmniWeb, or Shiira.)

This is how I do most of my capturing of data to Devon. You highlight the text you want, and select “Take Rich Note” from the services menu. (See the picture below.) Notice how there is also a keyboard shortcut for selecting this feature, so you don’t have to grab the mouse. Also note that the services Menu is usually not located next to “Help” as in the picture below. I am using something called HotService which places the service menu next to the Help menu, it is usually located under the application main menu (see second shot below). Since most of that data I want is just text, images and links, this method works well as the Take Rich Note preserves all of this and is a relatively small file size so as not to clog up my hard drive by needlessly saving all the adds and extras on a page.

But you will notice that if you are using Firefox and you try to do this, the option is grey (i.e. not useable). (See the picture below.) Never fear their is a solution that makes this process easy.

Bookmarklets

(This works on all browsers.)

When you download Devon from the site and install you will notice a folder next to the main icon that says “Bookmarklets,” and herein lies the key to success. What is a Bookmarklet? If you want a technical explanation you can click here. But for the purposes of Devon, think of it has having the ability to add “buttons” to your web browser that will send information to another application. This is how del.icio.us works for example (so you can just click one button and upload a link to the site). What the Devon bookmarklets do is add a button to any web browser that allow you to click on said button, and have the information added to Devon. There are two bookmarklets, and you will probably end up using both depending on what type of data you want.

Installing the Bookmarklets: This is actually a real simple process, and there is a forum discussion over on the Devon site. But I thought I would streamline the process and add some screen grabs.

1. Download Devon from their website. Even if you already have Devon installed you need the extras that come with the download, not the program itself.
2. Double click on the disk image, and then double click on the disk drive.
3. Depending on which version you are working with you should see a folder that says “bookmarklets.” This is what you want, open it and you should see to items inside the folder like this



4. Now open your web browser of choice (I am using Firefox for this demo but any browser should work).
5. Next drag each icon into the “Bookmarks Toolbar.” (See photo below.) If you can’t see your bookmarks toolbar you need to select it from the View=>Toolbars=>Bookmark Toolbars.



6. Now when you drag these into Firefox, Firefox names them renames them. So to fix this just right click (or control click) on the bookmarklet and select properties from the pop-up menu to rename.

If you click on the Archive button, this will send a complete archive of the page to Devon. This is larger in file size, especially if there are images involved, but you can access it offline, and search within the document. If you select bookmark it will merely send the address to Devon not the whole page. You will have to be online to see the information. You can however send just the address to Devon and next time you are using Devon load the web page using Devon’s browser and select Rich Text Note per the method above.