Note Talkers

I’ve seen GoalEnforcer in Google AdWords blocks several times, so I thought I would check it out. It drew me in with GTD references, being “visual”, and promising support for the new UMPC (Origami Device).

Overall I wasn’t that impressed, so I’ll just post the rough outline from my notes…

• No installer? Just unzip and run the GoalEnforcerDemo.exe
• Went through the Easy Start Tutorial. Fairly straight forward.
• When creating multiple items they just stack up until you move them. Not conducive to brainstorming since I can’t see what I already entered.
• When linking to a parent topic… they suggest a max of 7, but supports more.
  • Interesting suggestion of limiting to 7 main subtopics, but have not looked into it.
• Supports multiple subtopic levels.
• Shows a navigation tree in upper left when going into subtopics, but can’t click on it to navigate.
• Can use arrow keys to navigate.
• Currently selected highlighting needs improvement.
  • Navigate to other topic and it makes the border thick. More obvious than the thinner line for currently selected item highlighting.
• No indicator of number of subtopics when at a higher level in the navigation tree.
• ClipBoard on right side. Kind of like a margin to store items.
• Status/Report = Decent. Can also FTP to a web server.
  • Save to HTML failed with FireFox as default browser
• Demo doesn’t allow Save or Print.
  • Show stopper for me. End of review.
• “50% off” = $14.95

Overall I like the idea and could see the value if it was a more polished application, but in it’s current state I do not see $15 worth of value. There are plenty of similar apps that work better. (I would recommend MindManager)