ISO a decent PIM - I wish I had InfoCentral again!!

As I keep looking for a better PIM, a better to do list manager, a better cal...: " I keep looking for a better PIM, a better to do list manager, a better calendar"



'via Blog this'

The
closest I have ever come to a PIM that made me happy was InfoCentral on my Compaq Concerto running
Windows for Pen Computing. Circa 1994. Then later at UW Madison 1996-2000, on
another pen/tablet - I think a Toshiba or Epson?  I have had so many…

I have
blogged about this before: https://plus.google.com/+AndyGlew/posts/jDTJxgJ78F3

Possibly
a description of InfoCentral: http://www.macros.koenecke.us/InfoCentral/whyic.html

The first and foremost advantage of InfoCentral, of course, is its
linking technology. Using this, any object – be it a person, organization, event, task, file on disk, or a
custom-created object – can be
linked to any other object. Further, the links themselves are objects.

From <http://www.macros.koenecke.us/InfoCentral/whyic.html>

I loved
InfoCentral's flexible but semi-structured format.

• There were obnnjects and
  connections between objects.
• Connections were themselves
  objects, and could have properties
• Connections could appear
  assymmetrically  objects to which
  they were attached: eg father/daughter
• Connections could have date
  ranges.  E.g. you could record an
  old address, but mark it no longer valid for searching
• Objects had types, fields
• I liked this - sometimes
• Although I often found it
  annoying, eg when non-European name formats did not match up to
  InfoCentral's templates
• IIRC you could hide any
  empty fields - not sure aboyt that, but obvious
• You could create subtrees at
  any point - I thought of it as "shaking" the tree.

I think
of InfoCentral as a network database.

But it
was fairly obvious that InfoCentral was implemented, or at least could be
implemented, as a set of relational tables cross linked to each other.

     The main reason I haven't reimplemented
this is that at the time RDBMSes were not that common.  But nowadays, with SQLite, much easier.

My main
problem with InfoCentral was that it could not handle pen or bitmaps. 

     But I worked around this by linking
InfoCentral to … I can't remember the name, Inkwriter? AHV?

The
software that I believe Microsoft acquired, and which I think may have evolved
into OneNote.

Mainly, I
used InfoCentral nodes as a superstructure - more than a table of contents, but
less that fully integrated - to the "digital paper" or
the-software-whose-name-I-cannot remember.

Drawback:
could not create a TODO list by hand in the open notes, and then have
InfoCentral know ab out it.

But
better than nothing.

The best
PIM setup I have had to date.

Why do I
no longer use InfoCentral/Ink?   I
stopped using pen computers for a few years - hard for pair programming. I
returned to pen computers in 2002 at AMD: one day In started writing the K10
Spec, got frustrated, and at lunchtime I went out and bought a tablwet PC, a
Toshiba P4400!

But I
think that InfoCentral and this Inkwriter?? Were no longer available.

IIRC
Microsoft bought the Inkwriter?? Company, and closed it down.  MS may have made either InfoCentral or
inkwriter?? Availble freely, but binary, not source.

Why don't
I revive InfoCentral?

• I should
• I think that I am egging
  myself on to do this uin this note.
• But I need the digital paper
  software

IMHO
InfoCentral is fairly straightforward

Why don't
I revive Inkwriter??

• Much more UI stuff.
  Autoplacement.
• If I could get OneNote
  convenient for starting single files or linking back…
• Years ago, UNIXes had little
  pen/touch support.

It would
be fun to write myself - but it will take a long time to get to a usable placed

I really
do just wish it was out there in a form that I could buy.

Waterproofed Fitbit Blaze

Waterproofed Fitbit Blaze: "Waterproofed Fitbit Blaze"

'via Blog this'

I just googled "waterproof Fitbit watch", since I have been waiting for the Fitbit Blaze replacement that is supposedly swimmable. Search turned up WaterFi, a company that does aftermarket waterproofing. 

WaterFi has a good rep, both on web and by personal experience - I have a waterfi'ed iPod Shuffle.

WaterFi sells a number of aftermarket waterproofed trackers, ranging from Fitbit Charge and Charge 2 HR to Fitbit Blaze.

They don't change the software, so no "swim mode". But reports say that they count "strokes" as "steps", which is good enough. 

The waterproofing closes up the air pressure port, so the altimeter "flights climbed" feature breaks. Minor sadness: living on a hillside, vertical is a useful exercise metric, correlates to intensity; but Fitbit does not do much with vertical, doesn't use for challenges, etc.

329$ for the large waterproofed Blaze, 300$ small, vs 199$ list, sometimes 150$ on sale. Since WaterFi offers a 99$ waterproofing service, it might be more cost effective to buy from FitBit or a reseller, and then send to WaterFi.

I am especially interested in the WaterFi'ed Fitbit Blaze, which has standard watchstraps (22/23/24mm?b - many for sale on Amazon) . "Leaked" photos of the (late, not yet shipping) new Fitbit watch seem to show that it does not use standard watchstraps.


---+ WaterFi'ed iPod Shuffle

A few years ago I bought a WaterFi-ed swimmable iPod Shuffle, which I used to listen to podcasts while swimming for quite a while. Notes: music fine; podcasts okay while doing breaststroke, but hard to hear doing crawl, and always miss something during tumble turns.) Still have, still works; I only stopped using (a) swimmer's knee (breaststroke), (b) got Fitbit, stopped swimming (c) it's a pain to sync podcasts to - modern podcatchers don't seem to handle non-phone devices like iPods.  But I still use occasionally, when I have a lot of podcasts or audiobooks to upload, amortizing the hassle of doing so.

Prompts thoughts: one of the things that attracts me about an Apple Watch is that it can supposedly play podcasts from the watch even when not carrying phone.  But I'll bet this doesn't work in the water (?)