A/C WebWorks
Paradise Lost and Regained? lthough we decry the voracious appetite of our operating systems for both memory and time, vendors have made great strides in computing platforms. The problem is that we have learned to misuse or abuse them. Our ability to change our work habits has failed to keep up with the technological evolution of hardware and software, and we are losing the "paradise" gained (i). Fortunately, third-party software and middleware may help us reclaim that ground. This article will look at organi zational-aid programs that plug into existing PC Web applications and make them useful They may even help chain your thoughts together The problems Web tools such as e-mail and browsers le us gather and share data at ever increasing rates. These products could enhance the imagination, but we don't always put them to the best use. E-mail accelerates communication but also promotes frequent, short, fragmentary messages that fill our folders and disrupt our ttme. Excii ing URLs flood our screens, but organiz-
ing, correlating, and absorbing the information exceed our grasp. Our personal "information highway" becomes clogged with traffic. For example, do you receive e-mail that faithfully copies >all of »your old >»communications in an extended exchange, until the document looks like a chain letter? When the titles of all your saved messages are the same, how do you find anything? Are you inundated with attachments that require opening, naming, organizing, and storing, with the promise that retrieving them is "merely" a few mouse clicks away? How do you deal with correspondence that includes URLs that may be vital to your mission or may just contain photographs of someone else's vacation? You can retrieve and store the best before they disaopear forever into the oblivion of "404 Not Found" errors But how do you avoid loding the files in a thicket of crvntic names? Are you satisfied with the intelligence of your text searching tools? Would the to search for and store images? And for most of us disadvantaged folks are without a license to run Docnrnen turn s Enterprise Document Management C
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Analytical Chemistry News & Features, July 1, 1999
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and other objects? The knowledge game is being played at a faster rate today, and most users are barely keeping even. Retaining current competitive advantages isn't enough; you must create fresh opportunities. And appearances do count—documents must be more attractive than before. Luckily, there are products to help us, and almost all of the following examples have freeware, shareware, or demonstration downloads available. Adding notes Various programs for jotting down and storing notes are available. Some of the tools are simple and may even seem oldfashioned. For example, SquareNotteffers the electronic equivalent of 3-in. x 5-in. index cards (http://sqn.com/lsqnote.html). But the package is no relic. It runs standalone in a DOS window and can fit on a floppy disk, allowing the program to migrate witii your laptop. Microsoft's classic Outlook software provides e-mail organizational services and some "sticky note" capabilities, and third-party vendors offer some interesting add-ons. NextWord has several products, including ActiveMail, ActiveView, and
InfoTree32. ActiveMail has full-featured text editors, freeform notes, external file linkage to the database of freeform notes, an integrated search facility, and a superb custom template tool set (http://www. nextword.com/). ActiveView offers s more versatile "to do" list, and the mail agent allows you to route incoming messages to a specific folder when you want, rather than when scheduled by a preset customization file. For storing notes, InfoTree32 offers sn engine that is based on the Access satabase and P3T1 handle embedded files and graphic images. Drag-and-drop image storage is available and a multilevel structured view of the database a "tree" makes navigation and location simple
dows) , then examine the freeware/shareware described at http://passtheshareware. com/c-notes.htm or http://phord.com/ stickynote.html. You can find alarmequipped notes that have their own databases at http://genware.com/postem/ gwpostem.html or notes with customizable wav and MIDI alarms at http://www. vulcansoft.com/. Organizing Web pages
Another challenge is organizing the Web materials you find. SurfSaver saves copies of Web pages on your hard drive and creates a searchable database (http://www. surfsaver.com/). The stored material includes text, graphics, frames, and hypertext links. Notes and comments about the To help organize random pieces of information, there is Micro Logic's Info Select pages can be added. Multiple users can (http://www.miclog.com/isdesc.htm). It is save, search, and view items, and folders a stand-alone tool set that is geared to folks containing these materials can be e-mailed to other scientists. with lots of small items to manage—lists, ideas, Internet data, reminders, plans, conWebforia's Organizer indexes material versation notes, and so on. automatically, creates abstracts, allows parts of Web pages to be saved, and creIn addition, savvy note programs and ates "libraries" and subcategories—extenmultipurpose clipboards abound. If you sions of the folder concept (http://webforia. need hundreds of notes or if your notes com/products/organizer.asp). Organizer require rich text editing, automatic saving, enables you to create personal Web libraralarms, color printing, "floating" (to use ies that can be customized by the specific them in any window), or the "stay on top" topics being researched. As your research option (to keep them on top of other winAnalytical Chemistry News & Features, July 1, 1999 4 7 7 A
A/C WebWorks effort expands, you can easily create new libraries or rearrange existing ones, simply by dragging items from one folder to another. These libraries can be exported to share findings with colleagues and friends. Keywords can be automatically highlighted for quick location in saved documents. You can also create "ticklers" and reminders to take action based on a piece of information. Because surfing the Web can be timeconsuming, some programs search for sites offline and store the pages to disk, allowing you to browse them much more quickly. WebWhacker is one example (http://www.bluesquirrel.com/). Computer consultant Dave Hooley explains another product, UnMozify (http:p/www evolve.co.uk/): "When used with [a] Netscape [browser], UnMozify will build a usable directory tree from the cache," Hooley owe
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button to the open/save menu, and it includes a general file organizer and an Internet organizer. Simultaneous support for English, Spanish, German, and Dutch is available. Multimedia document storage capabilities can be examined with OrMedii (http:// www.ionino.com/nino-e/ormedia_gen.htm). Sounds, images, documents, saved Internet pages, and writeable CD-ROMs are all supported. Key-phrase and image searches are possible. Hypertext launches are automatic to local or Internet destinations. Such packages use Accesss9 as a platform. The above products provide single users some of the capabilities usually only found in the enterprise solutions offered
The knowledge game is being played at a faster rate today. Luckily, help is available.
archive the cache contents discard junk such as ads counters and portal sites, by Lotus Notes, ,perating with hxtensions You can find reviews of an entire series of offline browsers at http://tucows.phoenix such as DocuShare (http://www.xerox. com/products/docushare/) or the Avianet/offline95.html. Possibly a more adtor products (http://www.aviatorsoftware. vanced product is Researcchro, which com/index.html). These packages are gives you control over printed-page layout usually coupled with large storage faciliand appearance (http://www.software. ties, such as rewriteable CD-ROM drives. canon.com/software/webrecordrp/ index.html). Products such as PageKeeper Pro have Metadata "smart folder" features, which allow you The introduction of extensible Markup to group related documents (http:// Language (XML) as a sequel to HTML will www.caere.com/products/pagekeeper/ provide a more flexible script environment pkpsmart.asp). Page Keeper Pro allows and facilitate indexing. There is an excelyou to specify the filing parameters, such lent white paper on XML at http://www. as keywords or phrases, file types, and arbortext.com/, and http://www. dates. You can clip documents together, datachannel.com/xml_resources/ deregardless of their type. Spreadsheets, scribes typical applications. For example, word processor documents, a scanned metatags the very tools that some Web page, and a Web page all can be clipped masters use to ensure their sites a high and handled as a package. placement on your hit list could be used FileMentor uses ssmple keywords so to index and organize Web pages. Metastore and retrieve files (http://integratix. tags can be imbedded at the head of scripts com/whatcanido.htm). The program opto include index information for use by erates within applications, adding a new search engines Information technologists 478 A
Analytical Chemistry News & Features, July 1, 1999
who work with digital libraries already have developed a standard metatag for bibliographic information, the Dublin Core standard (http://www.oclc.org:5046/oclc/ research/conferences/metadata/dubiin_ core_report.htmi). What do metatags look like? They are not complicated: According to Ching-Wan Yip of Wake Forest University, "Scientific data storage rapidly becomes a compound document issue." There may be a variety of file types—txt, doc, pdf, jpg, gif, tiff, mp3, and mpg—and the objects may be on a desktop, laptop, palmtop, CD, digital video disk, tape array, or elsewhere, he notes. The files may be local or spread across the enterprise. Web pages add another dimension. "Nobody really has any comprehensive, integrated solution," says Yip.
Doing IT differently Nevertheless, many are trying to find new information technology (IT) solutions. Buzz words such as "drill down" (lets you capture a critical "core sample" of a large data set), "bubble up" (lets you create a list of frequently accessed items), and "speed up the metabolism" (to increase the rate at which information is absorbed) permeate today's information technology offices. Typical examples of software useful in collaborative environments can be seen at http://www.opentext.com/livelink/ index.html; http://dunk.duke edu/ and http7/www platinum com/ The situation is even more difficult in the laboratory. But products such as NuGenesis ((ttp://www.mantrasofttcom/ software.html), which is reviewed on page 482 A of this issue, try to span the gap among instruments, labs, offices, and the Net and reach for a solution that is suitable even for highly regulated environments. (Comments, e-mail, and forums are invited at http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-dept/ dessy/internet.)
Reference (1) Title inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost t(6677 )nd daradise Regained (1671).
