InfoSelect: Must-have tool for building your personal knowledge base

By Chuck Frey

InfoSelect is highly valuable not as a tool to generate ideas, but to store and retrieve them. This program combines the best features of a word processor, a free-form database and a personal information manager to capture and organize many different kinds of text-based information. That's why InfoSelect is an ideal program to create a personal knowledge base.

InfoSelect's organizational principle is the outline: the left panel of the programs interface enables you to create a multi-level outline consisting of notes and other pieces of information. Each heading or item in this outline view corresponds to a document window that is displayed in the larger right hand panel of the program's display. When populated with a number of notes, this area of the InfoSelect display resembles a stack of virtual index cards. You can easily reorganize your content outline in the selector panel by dragging and dropping items to the new locations in your outline; the corresponding notes connected to each a line item follow right along.

InfoSelect's interface is somewhat similar to Windows Explorer, with its two-paneled view of folders and documents. Like Windows Explorer, InfoSelect enables you to expand or contract levels of your outline, see you can control how much information you are viewing at any given time.

InfoSelect's key strength is its ability to and put the broadest imaginable range of information, from project details, to do lists, notes, ideas and even content from Web pages and scanned in documents. InfoSelect can help you gather and organize all of it.

Each text window in the InfoSelect provides full featured word processing, the program can easily become a primary research and writing tool. I personally use it to maintain an extensive journal of thoughts, ideas and notes, as well as a repository for the text of interesting articles I have found on the Web that I may need for future reference.

Applications abound

How can you use InfoSelect? It can be used for any information you need to sort, categorize, remember or keep track of. You can use it to take notes, record the results of phone calls and meetings, organize project information, write articles or prepare presentations.

InfoSelect seems to be ideally suited to deal with the many various scraps of information that pass through the average knowledge worker's hands every day -- it can be a powerful tool to help you to combat information overload! InfoSelect provides a true solution to this info glut -- because it doesn't force you to arrange, catalogue and categorize your information. Just pour it into InfoSelect, and it does the rest!

Turbocharged search capabilities

InfoSelect's search feature is intuitive and lightning fast. Open the search window, and even as you type in your search term, InfoSelect displays a dynamic and graphical representation of the number of records that contain that text string. One reviewer likened this process to having a desktop completely covered with small post-it notes, yet still being able to find the note you need quickly and easily.

Collecting information in InfoSelect

One especially useful feature of InfoSelect 6.0 is a Windows system tray icon called the "transporter." Highlight any text on a Web page or other text-based application, click the system tray icon, and InfoSelect automatically copies this text and pastes it into a new text window. This feature is invaluable if you are researching an article, and need a fast and easy way to gather information.

Published on 9/7/2001

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Summary InfoSelect is a great tool for organizing the bits and pieces of information you come across on a daily basis.
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