I read your review of the Marware Sportsuit convertible for iPod. I am unsure if this fits my iPod which I purchased in July—it is iPod 10GB M8976LL/A. Is it considered 3G?

—Gail Armstrong

I did a lot of research into blogging software for my company. We needed an easy way for certain teams to communicate via their own Web sites to the rest of the company. These users were, by no means, technically inclined.

When TypePad is compared to any of the for-pay, outside-hosted sites, it wins. It is a very well-written piece of software and there is the option of going to Movable Type is you outgrow it and need to host yourself.

That being said, with Blogger being free now, I’m not sure it provides enough bang for the buck.

Two other products I would mention are Bloki and Bloxsom.

Bloki bills itself as a combination of BlogTool and Wiki. While it’s really not much of a Wiki, it does have some really cool features like WYSIWYG editing from anywhere through the browser (no other software needed). Built-in forums are another neat item. Bloki is free and it uses the outside hosting model so you do not even need a permanent connection to use it.

On the host-it-yourself side, there is Bloxsom. I am really thrilled with this. It’s a tiny Perl script that provides an incredible array of features. It’s really perfect for Mac OS X. Users of Windows and others platforms will have a harder time due to some Perl issues and some IIS issues (although you could avoid those by running Apache). If you are thinking of hosting your own blog, I highly recommend Bloxsom.

—John David Felt

This is a beautiful story! I live in LA and pass Union Station all the time. The next time I go by, I think I will stop in to see the trains. There is a restaurant in Union Station. Perhaps it’s a good place for lunch.

—Ellen Hendrick

So well-written, Robert. Greetings from Oz. We, too, had a great train journey (the rather expensive Sydney to Perth trip) spanning the continent, but I’ve yet to read such a beautifully composed account as yours. You clearly love your kids and your country, too. I hope to read more from you, too!

—Chris Birch

This is an excellent series on outliners so far! I love your in-depth, thoughtful treatment of the whole subject. This goes way beyond typical reviews that barely scratch the surface. Bravo, and please keep it up!

Just to add to your very long list of outliners, including some programs with outlining functionality that I hadn’t thought of using as an outliner like Keynote, there are a few others I hope you’ll include in your roundup. These are all OS X outliners and you may have not included them in your list for various reasons, but here they are for your consideration: PocketNotes, Life Balance, Sh-Out! My Brain (that’s not a typo!), Snap Notes, MA Memo, PMX, Project Desktop, and the new OS X version of Panorama, the only Mac relational database I’m aware of that sports a built-in outliner (I wish they all did). I don’t have any experience with them. I just ran across them in my shopping around for a good, robust outliner.

I’m looking for something that probably doesn’t yet exist—a program for organizing information that has the structure/relationship functionality you identified in your first article: 1) outlining for hierarchy, 2) table/spreadsheet for matrices, 3) database functionality for multiple relationships and TOC/indexing/searching, and 4) links/hypertext for non-linear association and interactive navigation. Are you or any other readers aware of an application that has all four of these functions? Some of the programs you mention have most of the functionality, but are missing one or two elements.

Anyway, I look forward to the next installments in the series, but wish I didn’t have to wait a month between them!

—Jeff Nailen

I’m impressed with the potential usefulness of this site as I peruse it for the first time. Keep at it.

—Anonymous