Prodigal son / interesting uses?

[Chris Wuestefeld]

I was a Zoot user way back in the day, but left it behind due to some technical issues. So for a bunch of years I've been using Evernote, and then OneNote. But Microsoft recently de-supported the Firefox clipper for OneNote, and if they really don't want me to use their app, well, I know when I'm not wanted. I remember Zoot being really cool back in the day, so I think I'm back, folks.

But I think it's been at least 15 years, and probably more, since I was an active Zooter. I'm struggling to remember how to fit this into my normal workflow.

I'm looking through the last couple years of conversation here, but so far I'm not finding very much inspiration - much of the comments seem to focus on working around problems, and less on how to use the tool in novel situations.

So how about it? Anybody want to suggest some non-obvious ways to capitalize on Zoot?

[Tom Davis]

So how about it? Anybody want to suggest some non-obvious ways to
capitalize on Zoot?

 

A bit late with this reply, but what the heck.

The very first working name I gave to Zoot was "Quick Study".  It turned out that name was taken, but it does capture my original intent: to make it easier to study and learn. 

 

I have around 15 databases I use regularly. Almost all of them have a dedicated gmail account.  I can't stress enough the importance of this for my way of doing things.  The ability to send a URL to a Zoot database, and have Zoot grab the URL, create a clean copy of the webpage, and then upload the clean copy back to the gmail account, is spectacularly useful.  It means I can access the material on any smart device.  So the email account serves as a free cloud service.  If it's gmail, that means you have 15 gigs of free storage space for each database.

 

I also send a lot of long-form material to my Kindle, and Zoot is VERY good at that.  You can, for instance, send an entire Wikipedia article to your Kindle, and it shows up in a nice clean format that is easy on the eyes.

 

The Print function in Zoot has been supercharged now and is worth exploring.  It lets you create a webpage with any item or group of items in your Zoot database.  You can use the webpage as a source for AI and ask questions against it.  If Microsoft Edge is your default browser, you can use copilot to summarize the webpage using the copilot slide out window.  I'm sure there are chrome extensions for other browsers that do the same.

 

Other things I do with Zoot:

 

* Micro-manage the development / tech support end of things via a Task database customized for software dev.

 

* Feed, Reddit, Podcast databases to keep up on my topics of interest.  Many podcasts have > 1000 episodes and growing, so I like the ability to quickly search for episode content.

 

* I subscribe to many e-mail newsletters, each routed to the appropriate database so that I'm not overwhelmed.  E-mail newsletters have gotten quite good over the last few years; they pack a lot into a little space, and Zoot manages them well.

 

* I watch a lot of YouTube videos on my big screen TV. While watching videos, I have my phone ready at any time to send the URL of the video to Zoot so that I have it on file.  This is especially useful for DIY and How-To videos, as I can fetch the comments, which are often very helpful.

 

* I like using Search Box to conduct web searches, as these searches are added to my Web database. I can get a very good view of what I've been up to over any period of time by examining the activity in the Web database.  Search Box: Ctrl+Alt+?

 

* I use the Zooter and Cloud Zooter a lot to bring things in and send things out of Zoot.  If I clip something to a database using the Zooter, and I have an email account set up in that database, the clipped material is uploaded to the mail account, so I have a cloud copy of everything I clip.

 

* I mess around with AI using the Prompts database and the new Prompt Engineer.  This is more of a hobby at the moment, but I suspect it will become more valuable as the various AI bots get better.

 

Tom Davis
Zoot Software
t...@zootsoftware.com

[Roy Appletree]

Tom,

Please elaborate on this taking an URL fully cycle.

 The ability to send a URL to a Zoot database, and have Zoot grab the URL, create a clean copy of the webpage, and then upload the clean copy back to the gmail account, is spectacularly useful.

Thank you

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[Tom Davis]

Please elaborate on this taking an URL fully cycle.

I've updated the help file in the latest release 9.1.20 with some refinements, so grab that and then hit F1 and search for Mail Server there.

 

In short:

 

* If you have a database with an e-mail account already, just choose Account | Account Settings from the main menu, then click the SYSTEM tab and check the [URL] Send to Mail Server checkbox.

 

* If you want to add a mail server to a database that does not have an e-mail account, then choose Account | New Account and watch for the Mail Server settings along the way.

 

Much more clearly laid out in the help file (with pics), so better check that.

 

Below are a couple of samples of what an item that has been uploaded looks like in Gmail on a smartphone.

Tom Davis
Zoot Software
t...@zootsoftware.com