Review courtesy of Dr. File Finder and SoftwareVault.Com

Amigo!: Order In The Middle of Chaos

Amigo!, by A & J Systems, is a free-form database that can bring order to all of the chaos around you. If you are like me, you have dozens of odd-sized pieces of paper tacked to a bulletin board or Post-it notes pinned to the wall. Each one reminds you of your ID and password for the dozens of sites and servers that you connect to every day or phone numbers you need to remember or that never-ending to-do list. Or maybe you have a file folder full of hard copies of hardware or software fixes and serial numbers. Or maybe you need to catalog your computer games or your collection of CD's. Lots of the applications you already have provide a Card File to keep track of names and addresses, but not all provide a way of keeping track of the mass of information we all find ourselves buried under.

Keeping Track Of Everything!

If you can answer YES to any of these, you need Amigo!, a Personal Information Manager that is really personal. Your note may be a single line or a single word, or it can be multiple pages long. You can save your notes in any format you wish from ASCII text to Word to WordPerfect. Amigo! is a Free-Form Information Manager which means that you can define the format of each note and change it to suit yourself. Amigo! does have structure when it comes to the creation of the type of notes you want to keep. Click on Styles and the list presented includes: Articles with spaces for Title, Author, Content, and Magazine, Bookmarks with a space for URL, Companies with email addresses, File Downloads, Free Form Note, Internet Accounts with space for URL, ID and Password, and the usual Names and Addresses. You get to store information the way you want.

Loaded With Features

Amigo! has a host of features that make managing information a cinch. The interface mimics Windows Explorer with, for example, Personal File representing the drive, Names and Passwords as a folder and each individual note using the first line of each Note as a file name. So you don't have to spend time learning to navigate in Amigo!. Because of its Explore structure, Amigo! can be an excellent outliner as well as a free-form data manager. The file tree structure can be manipulated by Dragging and Dropping or Cutting, Copying and Pasting Notes and Folders within the tree. The PDQ option allows you to expand short forms as you type. You set up which common forms you want PDQ to recognize. For example, you might want to be able to type AOL and have it expanded to America On-Line wherever it occurs. Or you might use it to make corrections in common typos: define "receive" and have it be expanded to "receive." If you do a lot of research, you might want to create a shortcut for frequently-used sources. Make the short form something like "enc" and the long form Encyclopedia Brittanica with the full bibliographic information.

Making It Easy To Share Information

Sharing your information with co-workers or anyone else is easy. You can send a folder of Notes to another user via e-mail and the structure of the folder will be maintained or you can send Notes to either HTML or text files. You can even communicate with yourself. If you have Amigo! installed both at home and at the office, you can easily move information from one to the other. You can create an Interchange file at home and import it into the File Tree of the office copy. The selected Tree data and all related Note data will be copied to the Interchange file.

Your Friend On The Internet!

Lots of data management programs have many or most of these same features, but it is in how it handles data off the Internet that Amigo! really stands out. Internet addresses (URL's), email addresses and news group names are automatically recognized by Amigo! and you can capture information directly from your browser with just one keystroke. "Hot Links" are formed that link directly to your browser, email client or news reader. Off-line, Amigo! captures all your bookmarks from your choice of browser into a Note. If you set the default browser to none, one of the options; the others are Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera, Amigo! will search for the browser next time you choose one. This can come in handy if you move your browser or change your browser after you install Amigo! It can also come in handy if you have to reinstall your network and/or browser software. A major change resets the Bookmarks to the default. Capturing Bookmarks online is just as easy. Go to the site you want bookmarked , bring up the Amigo! Link, select the file and folder where you want the note placed, and select the Bookmark button. Once the bookmarks have been captured, you can then edit them, add information, and even add addresses. Bookmarks can be that much more useful if you include descriptive material with the Bookmark. Think of all those bits of paper with just a phone number. Two weeks after you write it, you may not be able to remember whose number it is. You can add text manually once the Bookmark is placed in a note file or, Amigo! will do it for you. Amigo! will, if you want, monitor the Windows Clipboard. Each time the Clipboard changes, you have the option to create a new Note. The data from clipboard is then automatically pasted into the new Note. Amigo! Link! can be activated from the Amigo! icon in the taskbar when Amigo! is running in the background or by pressing Shift-F12. Go to the site you want to bookmark, select some text you want to include with your bookmark and copy the text to the clipboard. The Amigo! link window will move to the front and you can then select one of the Bookmark buttons. The Bookmark will be copied and the clipboard data will be included as a description of the bookmark. You can select Bookmark Only if you want the bookmark or Bookmark and Comment if you want both. You can even use Amigo! to send URL's to friends via e-mail. Keeping Track Of Files Amigo! helps you keep track of downloaded files. The Internet offers an abundance of information and programs to download. Downloading is the easy part; remembering what the files are for, or where you found it not so easy, especially given the cryptic nature of programs today. Three of the programs in my Download directory are: AMG32setup, rzmmtn and Play_RBN_com. Not much help there. One of Amigo!'s styles is called Files Downloaded and it can easily keep track of downloads. If your download directory is C:\DOWNLOAD, create a folder in Amigo! with the same name as your directory. When you go online and begin the download, direct it to be saved to your downloads folder. While the file is being downloaded, press F12 to restore Amigo! Create a note and enter the exact name of the file being downloaded. You can also add a descriptive phrase or a title. For example, enter WNNSSD.EXE for the filename and Netscape Navigator for Worldnet for the description. Add as much information as you want. When you've finished, tab down to the URL line and press F9. This will paste the current URL into the note. The new note you've created will have a special icon, copied from the Files Downloaded Style. You can easily tell which downloads are new. When you double click on the actual file name the Open option will appear on the popup menu providing that the name of the file and the name of the folder match - remember, you named the folder in Amigo! C:\DOWNLOAD. You can go back to your Note about the downloaded file and add a comment (good program, but not what I'm looking for) or anything you like.

A Buddy For Newsletters

One problem subscribers to newsletters or newsletter digests have is that you can't pull out just one message or a part of a message. Amigo! addresses that problem, too. Make a folder and set up a file to hold the information from your e-mail message. Go to your e-mail program, find the message you want and highlight the material you want to keep. Save it to the clipboard. That will bring up the Amigo! Link. Select the folder you've created and "Make" the Note.

Summing It Up!

Amigo!, by A & J Systems, is a nicely done PIM/Free-Form database for storing a wide range of information. And it can find any information you have stored in a flash! There are many more features, but all in all, Amigo! is the PIM for the 21st century based on the way it takes the Internet and handles diverse information. Give it a try! http://www.ajsystems.com/