Managing personal information has long been a nagging theme of mine. How to manage all your notes, to-do's, contacts appointments and of course email (aka PIM data) in an efficient and effective way is not an easy chore .... I'm guessing most people get by at much less than optimum efficiency rather than manage effectively.
My requirements are an always present, easy to search capture system requiring little maintenance and management overhead. My current solution is using a hosted Microsoft Exchange solution which allows me to capture, view and edit from either my PC or my Pocket PC Phone (with over-the-internet data sync). This almost works perfectly. Unfortunately notes and files don't sync over-the-internet so I have to rely on syncing directly with my PC which is not ideal. Subfolders are also not supported and although I like using categories, the Outlook doesn't really offer any practical options for dynamically viewing items by categories rather than folders.
I've looked briefly at .Mac and will be interested to see whether the iPhone offers good over-the-internet synchronization covering all PIM data.
Anyway, I just watched the www.iscrybe.com Sneak Preview video. I've got to say I was amazed at some of the innovative usability features they are planning to integrate into the service. Offline sync is a killer feature that eliminates other online PIM services at the first hurdle. If the user interface the calendar and time zones handling in Outlook was as good as this it would be amazing. I look forward to seeing what they do with contacts. They obviously have some smart people who have sat down and thought about the real issues people face in effectively managing PIM data. I'm interested to hear views from anyone who has used Entourage on Macs (especially the version to be released this year) on how good it is at managing PIM data, or if anyone has any other good systems. (Please don't say paper ;-)
(This post is dedicated to Ben Miller, on who's site I read about Scribe. Ben sadly prematurely passed away at around the age of 50 at the end of last month after suffering two brain aneurysms. I'll miss his insightful postings and emails that always kept me up-to-date with some of the coolest web sites around. Thanks Ben).