RE: Taming the beast

["Smith, Martin" <smithmr -at- encorp -dot- com>]

I'm the somebody, and tossed in the comment at the end of the Frame debate
thread.

Where Is It is a shareware program that does a nice job of cataloging the
contents of entire drives or the contents of a given folder (and all its
siblings). You can create multiple databases, each for a different mount
point.

I evaluated half a dozen of these programs over the course of several days.
This one seemed the most robust, easiest to use, and had the features I was
looking for. I originally set out to find something that would give me the
Macintosh equivalent of the Label field under Windows. I wanted a way to at
least check off those files that I was done messing with. This program does
that, and much more. I like the idea of having a "virtual" Windows Explorer,
if you will. I can delete files that I've decided are duplicates or out of
date without actually changing the files. This is especially useful when
trying to sort out network drives.

I created categories for our various products. I then created various labels
that I use to track my progress. An elaborate search function allows me to
find all files that I labeled "In Progress," for example.

I am in the process of taming more than 4,000 files scattered about the
company.

While we're on the subject, I'd love to hear from anyone else tasked with
getting the documentation for a startup company into shape. I'm the only
writer here and I'm experiencing the joys to taming the wildly scattered
files beast in addition to taming the management, which heretofore had only
heard of technical writers as the butt of Dilbert jokes. Any "How Manage and
Reward" aka Care and Feeding for your Tech Writer books would be most
appreciated.

Martin R. Smith
Technical Writer / Audiophile
ENCORP: The Energy Automation Company, http://www.encorp.com
(970) 686-2017 x 223


Dave Chisma wrote:

Someone posted an interesting comment about Where Is It
(http://www.whereisit-soft.com/ ). I would reply directly, but I can't find
the message amongst the 300+ e-mails I found this morning.

But since I'm posting to the list I might as well take advantage. Here's my
question: Have you used 'Where Is It' (or something similar), and if so, how
has it helped you?

I have a similar problem to the one quoted earlier: I've recently joined an
organization that has produced thousands of feral (uncontrolled,
uncataloged) documents over the years. Where Is It might be just the thing
to help sort out this mess and help me tame the beast (or at least keep it
from biting me so often).

David Chisma
Technical Writer
Retail Directions Group
dchisma -at- retaildir -dot- com -dot- au