As Scott over at The Recursive ISV said, “…it’s utterly brilliant.”

Similarly to Scott, I too was wanting to develop the desktop portions of my ThoughtFiler project in Delphi 2009 but the price of entry is out of my league at this early stage of development and CodeGear don’t appear to have any equivalent programs running. I daresay this will be a huge mistake for them in the future!

I’ve been doing lots of pen & paper development, sketching out database schemas and UI designs. I’ve now got the initial UI for the ThoughtFiler desktop version worked out and, even though it doesn’t do anything, it’s nice to finally see something on a screen. It feels like I’m finally making some progress.
The web version will probably wait now until next year after the first release of the desktop edition.

“I know, I know. I am aware that there are plenty of text editors in the market. One could easily think that there is no need for yet another text editor.

“But I don’t share that point of view.

“I think that text editing can and should be improved. It can become a much more comfortable experience. There is a lot of innovation yet to be done in text editing, and I hope to make NGEDIT a sound first step in that direction.”

His thought’s on why he’s developing NGEDIT are similar to why I wish to develop ThoughtFiler: some parts of my idea have been done before, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Even given all the potential competitors I listed in my previous post, none of them really come close to the vision I have for ThoughtFiler. Even though, initially, ThoughtFiler will look like a clone of some of them, my hope is that eventually, its scope will extend beyond them.

….

“Pay attention to the idea that won’t leave you alone — this is taken from Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can’t put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can’t get yourself to do anything on it? Move on. Find yourself waking up out of bed to write down new ideas about it? That’s a good one to choose.” [Source]

This is an idea that has been chasing and bugging me for going on four years now. I’ve finally decided to start paying it real attention. The more I seriously think about doing it the more I think it has legs.
And, the final reason? ThoughtFiler is a product I want to be using now. It frustrates me that it doesn’t exist. I can (obviously) see the benefits of my vision and I want it available so I can use it! I wanna eat my dogfood!

One of the biggest reasons is that it’s becoming a trendy area. Many have ideas about it.

“Consolidating your stuff to an online service is an exploding area right now – lots of the storage services are differentiating themselves by offering this type of thing.” [Source]

A few more cons on the web side:

• Google. ’nuff said really. There are enough hints already that they eventually want to store everyone’s stuff. GDrive. Also, here. Also, now with confirmation of their forthcoming calendar they will have one more piece of the PIM puzzle. On the other hand, the (current) lack of integration between most of their services could be seen as a benefit to myself or others, at least in the short term. Also, the growing distrust and uncertainty of Google’s future plans could be a good thing – they don’t seem to realise that most people don’t want all of their files out of their control.
• Yahoo. These guys already have some leanings in the ThoughtFiler direction (sort of), ala their Addressbook, Briefcase, Calendar, Notepad, Wallet (?maybe), and 360.
• BackPackIt & Remember the Milk. These guys are up and running now and have a user base. However, they have chosen to basically service one PIM element: to-dos. In other words, they could be considered only partial competitors.

All the various new ajax home pages [source] “could” be said to be competing in my marketspace:

• Eskobo, favoor,Fold.com, Google,Goowy (Flash, not Ajax), Gtalkr (Flash), HomePortals,Microsoft Live, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Protopage, Wrickr, Zoozio.

…but realistically, at least at this stage, they are not really competitors, but more something that people may initially confuse as such (until they use one or more of them).
There is more competition from the desktop side however:

• Ecco Pro (even if it’s no longer being developed)
• Info Select
• Keynote
• sqlDesktop
• Treepad
• UltraRecall
  

Hmmm…

Well, read on for the concept-in-brief…

The basics of the whole ThoughtFiler concept, distilled to its core, is Stuff. Digital stuff. Your digital stuff.

Everyone now has such a mass of electronic stuff that needs to be kept track of. E-mails, documents, pictures, websites, blogs, IM messages/chats, et cetera, etc…

…ThoughtFiler is (or will be) an umbrella for tools for tracking, storing and retrieving stuff in as simple and straightforward a way as possible (i.e. tools that do most of their work unnoticed & in the background until needed).

.
Over the years, I’ve tried many systems for organising all of the information that I want and/or need to keep track of in my life. I’ve also observed the various techniques that others use to organise themselves using both electronic and other methods. And that’s where the idea that became ThoughtFiler began – in my own frustrations at the PIM tools available and in my own ideas about how they should work.
Most of the PIM software applications sit at one of two extremes:

1. They are totally freeform in how your information is stored and structured.
2. They are a completely hierarchical-based system.

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with either of these approaches but, for most people, a solution that sits somewhere between these two is better. A good PIM should be able to adapt better to what a user is doing and what kind of information they are dealing with.
.
So, I suppose at it’s simplest, ThoughtFiler can be described as a new kind of PIM. It’s a secure place for your stuff that you can access from anywhere: the web, your PDA or on your desktop using a web browser or the client-side application.

Does this sound too broad an application to work? Maybe, but it’s an application many of us need.

Does it sound like too grand a plan for a Micro-ISV? Probably, but it won’t start off anywhere near as grand as it will become. I’ve got my development planned out in such a way that will enable it to grow in a very modular and controllable fashion. Every step of the devel process will (or should) result in a usable product/service.

Compared to some of its competitors it will do a lot more. Compared to other competitors it will do less. But to its users, it will do just enough to allow them to simply manage their info and get on with more important work.

More soon…

• Another web mail client.
• Another search engine.
• A social networking site.
• A blogging service.
• Another portal/personal start page.
• Solely web-based.
• Solely desktop-based.

…although, it probably will integrate with most of the above in interesting ways. More on what it is soon…

Let me start with the name: ThoughtFiler.