PIM tools

PIM application or tool is any tool that help us manage information. In a real world this are desk (if we have e.g. organized piles) file cabinets, paper clips, staples, etc. In the digital world these are applications that let and help us manage information. Examples are file manager, email client, web bookmark manager, calendar, address book, RSS client, voicemail, photo manager, video manager, to-dos, etc.

Some of such applications allow also other activities like viewing, creating, editing information. A web browser's primary function is to browse the web, but it usually has bookmark manager integrated. A web browser is also used to host web applications that let us manage information (like web email client, web calendar, social media). Email client is used to manage information but also for creating new and viewing existing information. An instant messaging (IM) client is used to have conversations with other people but the part that logs conversations and lets us manage them is a PIM.

PIM research prototypes

Below is a list of several research PIM prototypes. These tools tried to answer/solve one or more problems we as users face everyday while managing our personal information.

In the frame on the right is a list of tags. Selecting a checkbox by a particular tag highlights prototypes that correspond to selected tag. More than one tag can be selected resulting in OR highlighting.

Stand alone version of the below list

<anyweb mywidth="100%" myheight="700px">http://pim.famnit.upr.si/pim/pimtoolsembed.html</anyweb>

A list has over 80 prototypes listed and is growing. Although the present list is not short, there are other tools which probably deserve to be listed here. Please let us know, if you know a research PIM prototype (even if it is of commercial nature now). We would appreciate every suggestion and critique about the list, tags and mistakes we made putting the list together.

Mainstream PIM applications like Google desktop search, Bento, MS Outlook, etc. or any other smaller scale application are not listed.

The list mostly contains tools that can be installed on personal computers. There are a few tools for PDAs (ChittyChatty) and web (snip!t). A lot of tools have recently emerged on-line to manage personal information of various forms and opened an opportunity to share personal information with others. Some are very noticeable (flickr, facebook, myspace, youtube) and some not so much, but are very exiting and ground breaking (list.it, Proyozo, atomate). These tools are not on the above list but are listed separately below.

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Web research prototypes

• list.it
• Proyozo
• atomate

Other sources and lists

There are several lists of PIM applications on the web:

• Richard Boardman's list of PIM protoypes and commercial/open source/virtual systems
• Tools for Organizing Thoughts has quite a few PIM applications listed
• Wikipedia's list of Personal Information Managers
• DMOZ PIM listings
• A list of Document Management Appliations

There is also a (rather old) book on available PIM software from 1996:

• " Etzel and Thomas, 1996, Personal information management: tools and techniques for achieving professional effectiveness

Visualizing large hierarchies

Besides lines and nodes (like file hierarchies are presented in today's file managers) and intended outlines (like the table of content of a document) there are several other (large) hierarchy visualizations. Most of these visualizations do provide an overall view on hierarchies but most are also suitable to manage information. Most of them focus on one aspect of information items (e.g. size) and do not provide enough contextual clues for pim activities.

• 3-dimensional cone trees
• Cam trees
• Dynamic pruning in the TreeBrowser

• hyperbolic trees (Lamping et al., 1995).

• A novel space-filling mosaic approach shows an arbitrary sized tree in a fixed rectangular space (Shneiderman, 1992; Johnson and Shneiderman, 1991).

• The treemap approach was successfully applied to computer directories, sales data, business decision-making (Asahi et al., 1995), and web browsing (Mitchell et al., 1995; Mukherjea et al., 1995)

• Treemap (1991) uses a size of files and visualizes them as rectangles where the biggest file takes the biggest space on screen [33]. This visualization is good to spot biggest files but not for everyday management.
• Botanical Trees
• PhylloTrees
• Fractal trees
• PolyPlane trees
• Cone trees
• Circular trees

Shneiderman: The eyes have it: A task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations