Download/HomepageIt may be a scary thought -- to have a program be able to track how your
thoughts and movements -- but here it is. After all, Albert Einstein once said,
"Never memorize anything you can look up." So here's NetPad, a uniquely
pulled-together blend of web browser, offline browser, clipboard, URL-minder, text editor,
phone dialer, notepad, emailer, file manager, and PIM-like information organizer that can
capture your brilliant maunderings movements as you surf the Internet. And then link it
all together in a tree-style database of "ideas" you can mull over at your
leisure. Browse, edit, and shuffle your collected ideas online or offline.
[This newest version 3.0 adds password encryption for ideas, better searching, more
Options settings (default font, bullet indent, etc.) and sundry minor tune-ups and bug
fixes. Note that the encryption feature is available as an add-on option only to
registered users. Encryption, and other future add-on packages to be announced, aren't
included in trial download files.]
This program is one of those little hummers that has you emitting unconscious snorts of
pleasant surprise as it dawns on you how cool it does stuff. If you're a serious seeker of
information on the Internet, NetPad is a research tool you'll wonder how you lived
without. The developers call it the "Thinking Man's Browser," but that sure
seems like an understatement to me.
NetPad's companion mini-app, called MiniPad, lets you quickly harvest all your great ideas
from a web page via drag-n-drop onto the tiny, floating MiniPad -- with or without NetPad
running. Right-click on MiniPad to bring up a menu of NetPad functions.
NetPad's built-in browser allows in-program surfing, and if you have Internet Explorer,
all web-content you drag-n-drop or cut-n-paste in arrives with all links and formatting
intact. (If you'd rather launch your browser externally in a separate window, you can
select Netscape or Explorer in Options.) All "ideas" you bring into NetPad are
organized into files and whatever folder hierarchy you want to set up. Jot notes and
reminders, or modify imports, since there's a simple built-in editing facility too.
And here's a kicker, but only in the registered version: you can link all your ideas to
one another inside NetPad, so that you can later correlate those seemingly unrelated
strokes of genius. And with each saved idea or web item, a database is kept, of related
topics and keywords, so you can quickly find all saved items -- or discover new
connections between stored topics. Also, NetPad lets you click on any phone numbers and
email links to dial out or send mail.
So whether it's recipes, quantum theory, or baseball statistics that interests you, NetPad
is the perfect central repository for every gold nugget you dig up. Take some time to look
at the super Help files (preloaded in as "Ideas") to see the scope of what this
unusual program can do to make your Internet research much more fruitful. NetPad is
surprisingly inexpensive for what it does, and is free to try for a generous 90 days. But
you'll have to register to get the complete data-linking capabilities. It's easy to use,
plus there's excellent support at the product website for registered users.
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