Current Issue (Issue 123)

Clevercactus connects people and information directly across multiple devices and environments. Everyday we use various software products to manage different types of information that flow on to the desktop like mail client, PIM (Personal Information Manager), News-feed Reader (RSS feeds) and similar. What if all this information can be combined in a single software? Clevercactus is the answer. For example, if you get an e-mail from a client whose additional details are already available on your machine in multiple formats. To dig out this data that is spread across multiple applications, you need to start the various programs concerned, search for the relevant information and organise them properly so that you can see all data related to this client in a single window. We have to go through all these steps because the information was lying scattered on multiple folders, stored by different programs in various formats. It will be really helpful if instead of using multiple programs, you have one program that can collect/store information from multiple sources and provide you with necessary tools that can display the data in any order you want. The most important aspect of the software is that apart from providing the functions of various programs mentioned above, through its user-friendly interface, it allows you to see information from multiple sources in any manner you like. The program allows you to create your own information spaces. A 'space' is "an abstraction that helps structure your information". A single space "contains all related information, including emails, contacts, calendar entries, tasks and notes, outgoing items and deleted items. Another aspect of the program is the availability of a web server that helps you access it from anywhere on the web. That is, if it has been configured to pick e-mails, RSS feeds and the like, one can view them from anywhere on the web. The features of the software are:-

Email/PIM Functionality:Clevercactus manages traditional information needs (email, calendar, contacts task, and notes). It creates spaces instead of folders: all information associated with a project can be included in the space, e.g. mails, appointments, task, notes and contacts.

RSS Newsreader and Weblog Integration:With the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds, and weblog software integration (Blogger, Movable Type and Radio Userland), you have a single application for your subscribe and publish environment. Comment on other people's weblog can be posted to your own weblog or forward them by email. Emails can also be reposted as weblog entries.

Powerful Search & Filter Capability:It filter data by multiple criteria e.g. show all Messages, from Sender, in the Last Week etc. Routes data intelligently, e.g. replies to messages sent from a space are automatically routed to that space.

Deployment:Clevercactus supports many environments out of the box. One can import the data from Outlook, Mozilla, Eudora, mbox and others. Supports multiple accounts on multiple email protocols: POP3, S-POP3, IMAP4, S-IMAP4, SMTP and Hotmail. Supports access to data remotely through a web browser.

Currently the software is in Beta stage and developers are incorporating some more features like Synchronization between PC's, PDA's and Phones. I believe this software will be very useful for a mobile person.

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Site of the Week:- http://www.popline.org/

POPLINE, the world's largest bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related issues, is available free of charge on the Internet. All 300,000 citations, representing published and unpublished literature, can be accessed for no charge. POPLINE is maintained by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs and is funded primarily by the United States Agency for International Development. For those in developing countries who may have limited access to the Internet, POPLINE distributes POPLINE on CD-ROM to over 950 sites twice a year. POPLINE Digital Services also provides full text documents of many of its abstracts in the database at no charge for readers in developing countries. Full-text documents are only available if the information is not available locally, is not a commercially published book, and is less than 100 pages in length. POPLINE sends full-text documents as an e-mail attachment in Adobe Acrobat format or by mail. For more details, see http://db.jhuccp.org/popinform/aboutpl.html