Onfolio makes my job easier. I look at hundreds of start-up companies every year, research hundreds of topics using search engines, and read lots of blogs every day. I have a very good memory but keeping all of this information organized is a problem. Onfolio makes it easier to collect and organize information, add my own comments, and keep everything prioritized.
Search engines are great at finding information hidden in the more than 8 billion pages on the web. Bookmarks or Favorites are quickly overwhelmed. Saving snippets to Word or Notepad is tedious too. Onfolio makes it all fast and easy.
Onfolio is a web research tool and an RSS reader built into one clean intuitive interface. Onfolio is a browser add-on to Explorer and a plug-in to Outlook email. It can be used to "capture" content from web sites, RSS feeds, email, or even Office documents. The captured content can be organized into folders and sub-folders, or added to My Reading List for later reading.
I read tons of blogs every day, usually speed reading, looking for a few nuggets of new information. The "My Reading List" feature lets me blast through hundreds of posts and save the ones I really want to digest for later reading. It does the same sort of thing for web browsing. You can surf hundreds of pages, follow links, and explore the depths of the web...without getting lost. You simply "capture" the useful pages for later reading and plow ahead.
The cool thing about Onfolio is that as you are blasting through all this content, it makes you organize the information into "Collections". It helps you keep information from hundreds of sources organized into neat collections. You can easily share your research with colleagues on your LAN. Anyone can add to the shared collection, or they can subscribe to the Collection Feed and be automatically updated with new information.
Onfolio appears as an Explorer Bar on the left of the browser window. When you find an interesting web page you simply hit the "Capture" button and Onfolio allows you to save it to a Collection as a link, a local copy on your disk, or as a snippet. You can add comments about why this page is important to you and set color coded flags to prioritize or further organize the data. Another cool feature is the Site Capture option. You can capture a local copy of a web site at any level of depth, for later viewing offline. If you spend a lot of time on airplanes you will love this feature.
Onfolio also has an RSS reader and feed manager tool built in as an Explorer browser add-on. It works very well and has a few unique features. Onfolio adds a little toolbar to the top of each post. By clicking on an icon in the toolbar you can quickly, "capture" an interesting post to a "Collection", add it to "My Reading List" for later reading, email it, or Blog it. This is really cool. If you are reading a blog post and want to write a blog on the subject you simply click on the "Blog This" icon. Onfolio will open up your blog, create a new post, insert the link, and the opening excerpt. Now you are reading to post on that subject. All with one click.
The Onfolio RSS reader also has some time saving features. It will automatically detect RSS feeds on a page and set up a feed for you with one click. No more searching around for the appropriate RSS feed option and going through feed reader subscription menus. Another neat feature is the Feed Newspaper option. Once you have subscribed to all these feeds you can easily organize them into a "newspaper" and browse through them at whatever level you want (single feed, feed folder, or all feeds). This is another great way to productively focus your reading time.
I have been using Newsgator as my RSS reader and feed manager for a long time. It plugs into my Outlook email and makes it easy to seamlessly read email and blog posts throughout the day without ever leaving Outlook. Onfolio takes the web browser approach to RSS feeds and management and works seamlessly with Explorer. Both work equally well. Onfolio has the added benefit of helping organize information from other sources.
When it comes to web research or keeping information from email, Office documents, web sites, and RSS feeds all organized in one place, Onfolio is the best on the market...by a mile. Onfolio has made my job easier and my time much more productive. I give Onfolio two thumbs up.
Onfolio launched in March of 2004 and is now offering Onfolio 2.02 which is available for download for a free 30 day trial. Onfolio was founded by JJ Allaire, formerly co-founder of Allaire Corp, makers of Cold Fusion, Home Site, and other software titles.
I have to say, I agree with Don. This product is the Dom Perignon of the RSS Feeder/Bookmark industry. Its features are incredibly intuitive, I was up and running full speed in 10 minutes. A+
Posted by: Doug Cummings | January 12, 2006 at 09:23 PM