Lotus Agenda
Lotus AgendaLinks
[P]ieces of information can be allocated to "containers". You determine the names of these containers. Second, you can link different containers. Third, you can link the different containers and different pieces of information about different topics. Fourth, you can create custom, named views by selecting containers and pieces of information. There is no delay by undertaking detailed design of the table, form, or report found in typical databases or having to make connections between pieces of data.
Agenda calls these pieces of information "Items". Larger blocks of information are termed Notes. Containers are "Categories". Views or reports are called Views. Links or connections are the assignments of Items to Categories.
Chandler is a recent project by MitchKapor at the OpenSourceApplicationsFoundation to revive the idea.
Apparently, CommunitiesWiki is an idea for something similar.
Lotus Agenda is good if you know how to organize your information already. LotusAgenda had a stunning effect on me: I'd do like it was recommended in the LotusAgenda ad: enter info helter-skelter and let the machine organize it. I did. Then the results would even confuse me more... Why? Because garbage in garbage out. You enter stuff helter-skelter it will come out helter-skelter.
Human beings classify information ten thousand times better than machines. We have a sort of refined intelligence they don't have...
I told myself: "what is this nonsense, asking a machine to organize my information. Why don't I do it myself? And I did." In two or three years I came up with a paper system that could beat the fastest computer on earth.
Agenda had a sort of learning system function. You'd enter an item: say "Meet Paul next week". You'd put Paul in the person field on the right of the item. Afterwards everytime you'd type an item containing the word "Paul", the program would put it automatically in the person field. Then you'd view the items by field and you'd have the list of items related to Paul.
One of the best uses of Agenda was in creating outlines. You'd start a file called The Birth of the Web. You'd write a long item. Say: "TimBernersLee and the Web". Then you'd attach a file to it. This way you could create sort of hyperlinks. For this Agenda was excellent. See SpreadsheetsWithFileAttaching?.
Lotus Agenda had its uses if you already knew how to organize your information and you were looking for some software to help you store it. Then you could play around and see if Lotus Agenda can go well with your method.
Otherwise if you were expecting a software to do what you could not do manually, you were in trouble. Lotus Agenda could even worsen your mess exponentially!
The main mistake the promoters of Lotus Agenda did is to choose to promote the entering-stuff-as-you-go-along-and-Lotus Agenda-will-make-sense-of-it strategy. They should have chosen a better use of Lotus Agenda, a more organized way perhaps and they would have sold zillions of copies.
Apparently this system was tailored to MitchKapor's planning system. But Mitch unfortunately failed to explain his system. If he had maybe the app would have found many customers.
Lotus could also have published different ways to use the program by showing how some customers were working. It never did.
The timing was wrong for when Lotus Agenda came out, DOS was living its final days and Agenda never made it into a Windows version.
There is a similar product available for Windows as shareware however... see: http://home.earthlink.net/~jdc24/orGenta/orGentaFeatures.htm
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(last edited April 6, 2009)
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