Welcome to the IdeaMason Weblog!

Turn an interesting webpage into a real source that you can cite accurately from in your next paper. IdeaMason not only captures the URL and access date necessary for a citation but also captures the webpage in our customized dashboard browser. The best part about this internal browser is that it lets you save a local copy of a webpage.

All you need to do is drag and drop the hyperlink onto an open Library folder on IdeaMason’s homepage. This automatically creates a new source in the IdeaMason library and displays the webpage instantly in our internal browser.

For more information on managing web research in IdeaMason see our videos featured on the Tutorials page on our website. Take a look at “Manage Web Research Using the “Source on Web” Panel” under the Sources section.

QUESTION: A customer recently asked how to quickly copy the contents of a source list/bibliography directly from a composition into a new portfolio. He has several portfolios which contain materials and sources from documents/books which he now wants to use in a new set of papers.

ANSWER: If you want to copy sources from a specific composition, open the Library folder and find the subfolder called “library cited by composition”. This gives you a complete list of the sources in each composition in that portfolio. To copy the entire list of sources or a selection of the sources to a new portfolio hold down the shift key and just click through the list until you have highlighted the sources you want to copy. Then just drag them to the open new portfolio window and drop them on the open Library folder.

If you are dragging the sources into a portfolio that already has sources in that portfolio, the newly added sources might be hard to find, so here is a tip. Tag the sources before you copy them across by simple changing the “status”. Highlight all the sources in the list, right click and change the status to something you can easily recognize like “new chapter”. [You can instantly add a new status by clicking on the green plus sign in the “Status” pop up box]

Once you have dragged the items to the new portfolio/libray folder, click on Status column to sort the list by status type. From there you can simply copy them straight into a new composition to instantly create a new bibliography.

You can use this same process to copy materials (ideas, quotations…) into a new portfolio. Just go to the Material Folder on the homepage and click on the subfolder called “Materials by Composition”. This gives you a complete list of compositions in a portfolio, and in turn, all the Materials (ideas, quotations…) in each composition. You can highlight the entire list or a selected group of materials and drag them over into the Materials folder of the new portfolio. Again, if you want a quick way to find the materials in the new portfolio, just highlight the list and right click to change the “status” of the items before you drag them into the new portfolio.

A huge time saver to remember is that when you drag a Material (idea, quotation…) from one portfolio to another IdeaMason automatically takes the associated sources with it. What this means is that any material in a composition that has associated sources that helped you “automatically” build your bibliography in an old composition, will do the same for you in a new composition.

When you first drag a material(s) with attached sources into a new portfolio, the material(s) will get inserted into the Material Folder and the associated sources will get inserted into the Library folder for general use. If you then drag that material (idea, quotation…) into a new composition, the associated sources will automatically get inserted into the Source List tab within the new composition. This instantly creates your bibliography list without even having to drag those sources independently from the old portfolio to the new portfolio.

We recently got wind of a review posted about IdeaMason on “Becoming a Writer Seriously.com”. Tom Colvin, the author of this blog, states “IdeaMason is truly remarkable”. He gives a fantastic overview of the major features and a review which details IdeaMason’s usefulness in constructing long term term creative and research projects.

Here’s a link to the Review

There are no hard and fast rules on getting started with IdeaMason. And more importantly, there are no “correct” ways to organize your data. We recommend reviewing the tutorial videos on our webpage for information about the features and tools that are available to you. We also recommend reading a few of the usage tips on this blog for different ideas on getting organized. But once you have done that JUST JUMP RIGHT IN!.

If you have some books to log, start with opening a new Source. If you just want to get started writing, open a new Material and just start typing. As you transition between thoughts, open a new idea or create a new linked the idea directly.

Maybe you just want to jot down some thoughts and link them to online research you are doing. If you have some external files you want to organize, you can do that too.

And it is never too early to start a composition. (more…)

IdeaMason is lots of things, a library, a citation maker, an idea deposit, a composition builder, a categorizer, and a project organizer. It can be all those things to one person or only a few of those things. It really depends on the nature of your work.

All your work in IdeaMason is organized into portfolio. When you open IdeaMason for the first time, you find yourself working in your first portfolio “My Portfolio”. Think of a portfolio as a file or container of ideas, sources, links, notes. You can create as many portfolios as you like and name them whatever you like just like you would an ordinary file. Tip: Under File/Portfolio properties you can write a brief description to help you outline or describe the work you intend to do in the portfolio.

Use a single portfolio for a large project
If you are starting work on a big project you could create a single portfolio that will contain all the work, ideas, sources and compositions. You can divide your work into a number of different activities within this portfolio. You can also organize your materials and sources within the portfolio into different categories. The work you do in this portfolio might result in the creation of one major composition. Or you might choose to divide your work, chapter by chapter, creating a new composition per chapter. Inevitably, a large project always seems to break off into smaller subsets projects and even subset papers. This is where the advantages of IdeaMason come into play. If all your ideas and sources are in one portfolio, it will be easy to reuse ideas and/or sources, or even expand on a single idea or category of ideas creating a whole new project.

Create a home library
The work in a portfolio doesn’t always have to consist of ideas, sources and the compositions created with these materials. You might want to use a single portfolio focusing on only one of the features. For instance, if you have a home library or read a lot you could use a single portfolio as a library. This portfolio will grow (more…)

Usage Tips:
Browse the “Usage Tips” on this blog for helpful tips and information on the best ways to organize and manage the informaiton your store in IdeaMason.

Here are a few quick links to a few really good ones:

Do more with Saved Searches
The Matrix relationships between projects, activities and categories
Organizing your Library
Think differently about how you use a Composition

The Dashboard window has a fairly complete text editor toolbar which lets you edit/change font, color, align text, line space, paragraph indention, add symbols, spell check and a number of other things. It also lets you add bulleted and numbered lists.

All of these editing features can also be found under the Edit menu in the Dashboard window along with their respective keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts typically correspond with the same shortcuts you use in Microsoft Word.

GOOD TIP: The keyboard shortcut for bullets actually lets you extend the function of the toolbar item itself from a plain bulleted list to a lettered or numbered list. Just press and hold down Cntrl Shift and then keep pressing L to toogle through the variations of list types available, anything from 1, A, a, I, i.

IdeaMason’s panel configuration technology means that the interface you see in front of you is completely flexible. This lets you customize your work space to fit your specific needs and optimize your workflow.

What does this mean?
This means that you can move, dock, pin, hide and close any tab or side panel within a window. The Portfolio window, the Dashboard windows and the Composition window all have this built in panel configuration technology.

For instance, each tab (footnote, links, comments…) and side panels (categories, sources…) in the Dashboard windows can be:

• Moved - to a different location within the window
• Hidden - so that all you see is the tab giving you more room in your work space
• Pinned - which lets you see a footnote or comment with the Main text area still in view
• Closed - if you aren’t using that feature. or
• Reopened - when needed

Non fiction writers or students probably find they use most of the features in the material window. But if you are a fiction writer you might not care about the footnote tab or the source side panel. With the movable panel technology you can instantly reduce the clutter in the window and simply close the tabs or panels you don’t need. You can always reopen them if you find yourself on a project where these features come into focus again. Each time you change the window panel configuration just “Save the Window Layout” by clicking on the Window menu on the dashboard.

Moving panels or tabs around the window may feel a little weird at first. But if you mess up just click on the Window menu to RESET the WINDOW LAYOUT. This resets the window to the default configuration. It won’t take you long to get the hang of it and the benefits will surely make you smile. Finally, you can completely customize your window exactely the way you want, anytime you want. Just remember to “Save the Layout” [click on the Window menu to save].

The Portfolio and Composition windows work in the same way as the Dashboard window, letting you close, pin, hide or move and dock side panels and tabs.

The Composition comes with an added bonus that is pretty nice if you find yourself doing a lot of work in a single Composition. You can actually move a panel outside the original window space. For example, if you want to see both the source list and the preview panels at the same time, just drag the source tab and dock it just outside the Composition window. To reset the look of the window and condense the tabs back into place just click the Window menu to Reset the Layout. It is that simple.

Video Tutorials:
There are three videos in Customizing Your Workspace section (towards the bottom of the page) on the Tutorials page on our website to help get you started. This will show you exactly how to move, dock, pin, hide, close and reopen panels and tabs in the Portfolio window, Dashboard windows, and the Composition window.

Help
For additional help click on the Help menu in IdeaMason, click on Search and type in the keywords: window layout options. You can also find a detailed how to section under the Portfolio Management, Material Dashboards and Composition sections. Just click on the Help menu and Contents for more.

Occassionally we get emails from users telling us how much they like the page estimator. I have to agree. I find myself using both the word count in the Material window (bottom right) and the page estimator in the Composition (bottom right) to keep track of my own daily writing goals.

The word counter in the Material window makes me feel a little better when I get immersed in a single idea. A quick glance to check the count and I know I have made my goal. I also keep an eye on the page estimator in a composition to track my weekly and monthly writing goals. I typically create one composition per chapter and then pull in relevant ideas from the portfolio. I am pretty verbose at times and the page estimator helps me to quickly know when I have gone a little overboard and have some serious weeding to do. It is a good starting point when I am trying to bring together a chapter. Sometimes I just like to write within a composition itself, creating materials as I go. A quick update on the preview pane and a glance at the page estimator lets me know when I can quit for the day.

The page estimator works by counting the words and thereby estimating the page count. The nice thing is that you have the option to change the word count to fit your individual page specifications. The default word count per page is 600. This matches directly with a 1.5 spaced document in MSWord. In the Compose Draft Options window in the composition you have the option to change the spacing of the transcribed document in MSWord. To change the default number of words and customize the page estimator to your liking go to Tools (main portfolio homepage), click on Options and then select the Editor tab.

There are any number of ways to search and organize your materials in IdeaMason using categories, projects and activities (see our blog posting on “The Matrix“). But one area that may not be immediately obvious is that the Saved Searches feature goes way beyond just searching or even saving searches.

You might already know that the Search folder tab on the homepage provides you with the opportunity to perform either a simple or advanced search of a portfolio. And, so that you can rerun the search at a later date, you can also click on the Save Search button. However, the Saved Searches feature goes beyond a basic search tool. When you setup the parameters of a search and save it you are essentially setting up a customized folder view. When you think about it this will give you a whole new perspective on the information stored in a portfolio. No longer do you have to use the standardized portfolio folders to view your materials and sources. You can utilize the saved search feature to setup your own customized folder views.

For example, while working on a particular activity you find yourself working with a select number of categories. For an easy way to view the union of materials in those categories, just click on the search folder tab, layout the parameters of the search and select the categories you want to view, then save and name the search. This saved search then becomes like a customized folder view of the portfolio contents. Each time you rerun the saved search (from the Saved Searches tab) it will automatically update the results of the search.

Naturally, you can set up your custom folders to view materials from any perspective using any of the search fields available. The great thing is that you can update and edit the parameters of a search anytime you want, or duplicate the search and create a new search by changing a couple of the search parameters. To quickly view the parameters of your customized folder/search see the Search Summary Description at the bottom of the Saved Searches window.