April 18, 2004
Eastgate Tinderbox
You would think that one of the most obvious uses for a laptop is to take notes. But until recently, I just couldn’t get into the habit. Too many years of taking notes in traditional notebooks. Word is too much in some ways (I spend too much time worrying about getting the text styles right), and not enough in some ways (if you need to start a new, but related, note stream, a new document seems like too big a jump, just hitting return five times seems not like not enough).
Then, I tried out Tinderbox from Eastgate. The initial learning experience, I must admit, was not instantaneous. It was a bit like having a new, eager personal assistant who only spoke Serbo-Croatian . . . the ability and desire to help was obvious, but we just didn’t speak each other’s language.
As with most international relationships, though, this problem was quickly overcome.
Tinderbox can be viewed in a variety of ways: As an outliner; as a lightweight database storing bits of text; as a fast note-taking utility. What’s cool about it is that you can use it in one fashion, then switch to another. For example, you can spend the entire morning taking notes a conference, and go back and organize them using the outlining features and the database functionality, without having to stop to think about those functions while taking notes. It is wonderful for brainstorming-followed-by-organization, and that’s a very common way of working these days.
Although it’s probably going to far to call Tinderbox “programmable,” it does have a very nifty feature called agents. These are, in essence, canned, always-running searches that automatically organize your notes. For example, I have a file that contains notes about a forthcoming Blowfish Video production. Each scene has a note. Each scene-note lists the cast required for that particular scene. I also have an agent that scurries around and creates a note that lists the entire cast. Thus, if I add a cast member, the cast list is automatically updated. Same for locations, props, etc. Whee! It’s quite magical watching it go.
Tinderbox is fast. Given how fast modern computers are, I’m routinely appalled by how slow the software that runs on them can be. I’m a fast typist and all that, but if a 1.3GHz processor cannot keep up with my typing, something is badly broken.
You can export your notes into HTML (and XML) files using templates. There is, in fact, an entire blogging mechanism based on doing HTML export from Tinderbox. I can imagine putting together a shooting schedule, and then publishing it on a web site for use by the crew and cast, by using this feature.
At $145, Tinderbox isn’t particularly cheap, but it is great at what it does . . . something that is always worth paying a bit extra for.
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