These are other applications designed to work with information.
Sider is an engine to create and run tools to work with information and it indirectly compete with virtually any other information tool. It's always possible to create an extension to solve similar problem that some other tool solves.
This list is can help to get a better sense of what people need. Most of the tools in the list focus on a specific problem and are often quite good at solving it. However, everybody have different problems. As the problem user tries to solve becomes more different from the problem a tool is designed for it becomes more difficult to use the tool effectively.
Please keep in mind that all comments here (and anywhere on the website) are our own and do not express point of view of other developers or users. We might misjudge and misunderstand other applications, so by no means these comments are official reviews.
See
information management tools post and
existing tools post for a better description of different types of tools and how we try to classify them.
EditCommon trends
These are a common set of features presented by most of the tools that work with information.
Benefits
- Import/export
- Some form of API to automate the tool
Limitations
- Hard-coded data type. As a result the application is well suited to deal with the specific problem it was designed for. In reality people have different problems. As these difference between theoretical and practical problem becomes larger the tools becomes harder and more cumbersome to use.
- Often logic to work with data is hard-coded. In a way that forces user to adjust for the application and that can result in loss of productivity and certain aspects information (such as links to other documents or part of the structure).
EditOffice platforms
Office applications deal with the most common activities: writing a letter or an article, creating and analyzing spread-sheet, giving presentations, etc.
Microsoft Office is the most popular product in this area. There's also
Open Office and other office alternatives.
Benefits
These are very handy, general-purpose tools. What they aim to do, they do well. Word makes writing text very easy and convenient and Excel is good for any tabular data.
Often they are also quite flexible, making it relatively easy for developers to add functionality.
Limitations
The problem however is that often they are too general-purpose. Users end up having to adapt to what the tools can do.
These tools also support only one type of information (text, table, etc.) and deal poorly with needs for a more complex information structure. For example neither Word nor Excel can deal well with a long tree of tasks. As a result different parts, related parts of some project might end up stored in different documents. As a number of these documents grows large more time will be needed to manage and use them effectively, and more information will be simply forgotten.
It might be possible (with
Microsoft Office for example) to import from other data structures (tree of nodes in XML). However in the end it will be adopted for the type of data supported by the tool (table or text).
EditPIM
Tools to manage personal information.
EditCommunication
I'm referring to products used to work with e-mails and contacts:
Microsoft Outlook,
Thunderbird,
Omea, etc. They also often have built-in scheduling and simple to-do list (that are usually too simple to do full-scale project management).
Benefits
- Support for several common scenarios with appropriate data structures: e-mails, notes, tasks, contacts, appointments with schedule overview
- Integrated Internet and Intranet support, allowing users to get e-mails from different sources and synchronize tasks/schedule using one central server (Exchange).
EditNotes management
These are tools like Action Outline, OneNote, Wikipad, etc. They offer to organize only notes (rich text documents) in a tree or graph structure.
Benefits
- Usually allow special flags to be used on nodes in the tree and different parts of text in the note.
- Tree, or even graph, is very convenient way to organize notes.
EditMind map
Notes organized in a tree, but with a unique view, where all child nodes expand out from the parent node. Applications to create mind-maps:
MindManager,
FreeMind,
MindMeister, etc.
In general mind map is great for analysis and brain storming, but it's not suited for storing a large amount of information.
Benefits
This special view makes relationship between nodes more noticeable. It's easier to process mind map than a tree with child nodes shown under the parent node.
Limitations
The problem appears when mind map grows too large, with many child nodes. Because of the unique view large number of child nodes result in a lot of wasted free space, making it harder to work and navigate.
EditCollections
Applications to manage collection of different items (music, books, movies, etc.) -
Collectorz,
WinAmp,
Windows Media Player, etc.
Benefits
- Automated (often) to scan folders for music files, find items based on name or some ID (ISDN)
- Advanced search and filtering capabilities
EditProject management
Tools to help managing projects. We are mostly familiar with software projects management (
AgileTrack,
TargetProcess,
BaseCamp, etc.), but there are general purpose tools (
Microsoft Project).
Benefits
These tools usually try to promote different methods of managing work and complexity of the project. Some offer agile methods, while others focus on more conventional waterfall.
Limitations
They often deal with only one type of projects, i.e. software projects. If offered methods aren't suitable for the specific project, application becomes much harder to use. In real life each project requires individual approach depending on the size, complexity, budget, etc.