DEVONthink

I am using the DevonThink Pro Office version of the software. This is the 'full fat' version of the product, so some features may not be available on other versions.

DevonThink is one of those products that, on first sight, can be a bit baffling. It is a very powerful tool and like any powerful tool it takes some time to become familiar with all of its features. I have to say that this is not helped by its sometimes quirky interface.

The interface can be most generously described and 'workman like'. No concession is made to aesthetic. That said, once you get used to it you will have no difficulties making the most of the program's power.

So, what does DevonThink do? Basically DevonThink is a little like OS X's Finder & spotlight on steroids. It stores and indexes information. Here though the similarities end.

DevonThink can take most file formats and process them into an indexable form (text). Drop an image or PDF into DevonThink and you can process it with character recognition (only in the higher-end versions). The resulting text is then indexed and you can search for it just like any other text in your system. Nice!

Okay, so it indexes and is smart enough to index text in documents that cannot be indexed normally, big whoop right? Well, DevonThink also allows you to create folders into which you place you documents. WOW! Ah, there's more. You can add the same document into more than one folder, so all those documents and notes that you would love to have in more than one category are no problem. DevonThink will also spot and highlight identical documents. Grabbed the same webpage twice? Devon Think highlights the duplicates even if they are in different folders, allowing you to evaluate whether they should really be the same document in multiple folders.

And there's even more. As you add more documents into folders DevonThink can start to recognise common themes to the documents and can recommend folders to which new documents might belong (this is were it beats tools like Evernote, which I also love by the way, but for different reasons). Say you had categorised a whole load of webpages in a 'quantum mechanics' folder. All these documents will share the theme 'quantum mechanics'. The next time you capture a document or web page you can ask DevonThink to recommend folders to which it belongs. Assuming the new document has similar content to the document in 'quantum mechanics' (a fair assumption if it was about quantum mechanics) DevonThink will recommend this folder.

Even better, once you have a reasonable body of filed documents you can capture new information and simply ask DevonThink to file it in folders automatically, based on the folder's existing content.

Multiple databases can be created and open simultaneously. So you can theme whole databases - I have one per research project and one for miscellany.

There is a global inbox into which you can drop information until you are ready to assign it into one of your databases. This can be useful when you stumble on some snippet on the web. Capture it to the global inbox, then file it on one of more database when you have time.

Oh, and for Evernote fans, DevonThink can import Evernote export files. So all those notes you grabbed into Evernote can be easily integrated into your DevonThink database.

Enough. I could go on, but the best thing to do is visit the DevonThink web site, watch the demos then try it for yourself.

Didn't think I would be using it that much, but it helps not having to deal with thousand of small text files with your notes on your HDD. It keeps everything you want in the same place : notes, web archives, images, URLs… Group them, color them, browse them or search for anything you want. You can also export all your database back to your HDD if you prefer thousand of small text files.

Seems very powerful and I probable don't use it to it's full potential, but it help keep files organized and all in one place. i use it for note keeping, as it is easy to link to other files in your database. I'd like to put it more to a challenge by undertaking a real research project from the start in it. I'll have to finish the current projects first though :)

Pretty expensive, but it makes my thesis research so much easier. Also, with my scansnap, I can actually remember where things are.

Great app! Been using it for over a year now, it replaced Mori as my notes-assembler. Use it mostly to keep conference notes, drafts of blogposts, meeting minutes, recipes, ideas, articles, you name it! One place to gather everything. Feel like I haven't use the full potential of it, I haven't imported all my documents or email for example. It's the best thing to organize my ideas outside my head I discovered up to this day.