THREE, TWO, ONE, IGNITION: DEVONTHINK PROFESSIONAL 1.0 LAUNCHED
Coeur d’Alene (Idaho, USA), 17th of August, 2005 — DEVONtechnologies LLC
releases the final version of its brand-new flagship product DEVONthink
Professional 1.0.
The count-down is over. After more than one and a half years of development
and two public betas, DEVONtechnologies finally presents version 1.0 of
DEVONthink Professional. “This is what we had in mind when we created
DEVONthink three years ago”, says Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann, President of
DEVONtechnologies. “It’s a full-fledged, professional and extensible
environment for working with information of all kind.”
The final release of DEVONthink Professional 1.0 brings, again, many
improvements over the previous public beta. The new Automator support
offers 14 actions and ten sample workflows that demonstrate their
possibilities and using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger’s comfortable automation tool
for creating workflows and integrate DEVONthink Professional with other
applications, the Internet or the iPod.
An AppleScript droplet converts AppleWorks 6 documents for DEVONthink
Professional, three new scripts import complete mailboxes from Apple Mail
and Microsoft Entourage and copy e-mails from PowerMail to the database.
The Microsoft Entourage scripts also import only short headers now, and all
scripts have been overhauled for compatibility and performance. Compiled
scripts and Automator workflows can be added to the script menu making it
even easier to extend DEVONthink Professional’s functionality.
Also, printing of lists, outlines and sheets has been revised, the
Dashboard widgets have been updated and the AppleScript support and
performance has been improved. The web site export now comes with four
different templates, allows to select the text encoding and converts
umlauts and accents to HTML entities, if desired. With QuickTime 7
installed, DEVONthink Professional 1.0 supports lots of additional
multimedia file types. A new preference automatically inserts smart quotes,
localized for English-, French- and German-style curly quotes.
Finally, the documentation for DEVONthink Professional 1.0 is now complete
and available as both integrated online help (HTML) or downloadable PDFs
optimized for screen reading and printing.
“DEVONthink Professional is a powerful and extremely flexible tool for
everyone working with knowledge in form of documents, multimedia files and
Internet links. It is the information hub that brings everything together
and offers a unique user experience that can only be created on a
Macintosh”, describes Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann the broad range of
applications for DEVONthink Professional. “It’s the true paperless office
generations of computer users have dreamed of.”
DEVONthink Professional 1.0 runs on Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later (some features
are only available on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger) and is immediately available for
downloading from www.devon-technologies.com. The free trial version allows
150 hours of non-continuous use and must be licensed after the end of the
trial period for US$ 75 (introductory price). An attractive upgrade offer
is available for registered users of DEVONthink Personal.
Contact details for your readers:
E-Mail info@devon-technologies.com, Internet www.devon-technologies.com
A boxshot and a screenshot package for media professionals are available on
the DEVONtechnologies website (follow About Us ) Press ) Press Materials).
This press release is also available as PDF in our press area.
DEVONTHINK PROFESSIONAL VS. PERSONAL EDITION
Contrary to the home-user-centric DEVONthink Personal, DEVONthink
Professional easily handles multiple databases and so allows users to split
up their information collection into several smaller databases for specific
projects. Databases are simply packages and can be copied, e-mailed and
backed up like any other file or folder.
A new data type are records and sheets which hold table-like data like
reference lists, information collections or any other type of structured
data. Unlike spreadsheets, sheets and records combine the database-oriented
approach of records with a comfortable table-like view for easy entering
and managing structured data. “With the ability to create databases inside
a database, we deliver a feature that many of our users asked for. It has
always been DEVONtechnologies’ strength to listen to customer demands, and
this is just one more example.”, says Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann.
Professionals require professional tools. Consequently, DEVONthink
Professional comes with a larger AppleScript dictionary than most other Mac
application today, and features currently 14 powerful and flexible
Automator actions. Using scripts and actions, DEVONthink Professional can
be extended in almost every imaginable way, and with folder actions the
integration into custom workflows is just a matter of AppleScript skills.
Special attention has also been paid to triggered scripts than can be
attached to groups or documents in the database. Groups with triggered
scripts can for example collect items containing certain words (like smart
folders in the Finder of Mac OS X Tiger) or automatically connect to an RSS
feed, download all new items and store them as text files. The generated
news articles mark themselves as read when they are viewed, again by using
an attached triggered AppleScript. Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann: “DEVONthink
Professional allows users to create items with real built-in intelligence,
opening new possibilities with unseen flexibility.”
Heavy-duty web users will love the new download manager for downloading
complete web sites and storing them for offline editing and browsing in the
database as well as the possibility to save single web pages as Mac OS X
standard “webarchives”. Webarchives can even be edited in WYSIWYG directly
in DEVONthink Professional. The built-in Safari-based web browser handles
RSS, RDF, RSD and Atom newsfeeds, effectively making DEVONthink
Professional also a comfortable news reader and aggregator.
On the import/export side, DEVONthink Professional supports more file
formats than the Personal edition and comes with brand-new import/export
plug-ins. In addition to text files, rich texts, Microsoft Word documents,
HTML/XML, webarchives, PDFs and PostScript files, images, movies and MP3s,
DEVONthink Professional exchanges data with OmniOutliner, all OPML
compliant applications, BibTeX, iData 2 and the Mac OS X address book.
AppleScripts further integrate it with e-mail applications such as Apple
Mail, Microsoft Entourage, Barebones Mailsmith Qualcomm Eudora or
PowerMail. The new web site export plug-in lets users publish information
from DEVONthink readily prepared for their homepage, and an iPod export
plug-in converts selected documents for viewing on-the-go. No other
application on the Mac has ever been so open for all kind of standard file
formats.
Other features created with the professional user in mind are the full
screen mode, which allows to write and browse without any interface
clutter, the Mail-like three panes view for easy navigation and two
Dashboard widgets for searching the database and for quickly jotting down
notes in DEVONthink Professional. Finally, DEVONthink Professional has no
restriction on the number of PDFs and images in the database, and it comes
with both a comprehensive tutorial written completely in DEVONthink
Professional itself and a complete documentation as online help and
downloadable PDF.
“For us, DEVONthink Professional is the ultimate tool for everyone who
works with documents, images, notes, bookmarks. It’s not only for
scientists and students, it’s the paperless office application we have all
waited for” describes Mr. Boehnisch-Volkmann the huge range of possible
uses. “DEVONthink Personal has been one of if not the most flexible
application on the Mac market, and DEVONthink Professional continues this
tradition unbroken in the professional arena.”
BACKGROUND: DEVONTHINK
DEVONthink is the “real paperless office” for the Mac. DEVONthink keeps
* text and RTF files,
* scanned documents,
* notes,
* e-mails,
* images,
* chat logs,
* bookmarks and
* multimedia files
together in one simple to use database, integrating both local documents
and live content from the Internet to keep all project-related information
together.
DEVONthink not only stores documents, it facilitates
* editing,
* analyzing,
* organizing,
* finding and
* archiving
documents with its flexible work environment, powerful organization tools
and built-in AI architecture.
Unlike the Finder, DEVONthink provides an integrated work environment with
all the tools one needs for working with information of all kinds, from
simple text to PDFs and multimedia files. DEVONthink intelligently assists
the user with filing documents, finding similar files or searching the
database.
As a real Mac application, DEVONthink is also tightly integrated with the
operating system and its frameworks. It provides a dock menu, and services
menu commands and makes heavy use of the Safari web browser engine and the
advanced PDF library of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Also, it features one of the
largest AppleScript dictionaries of all applications on Mac OS X and comes
with Dashboard widgets for accessing the database from almost everywhere.
USAGE SCENARIOS: DEVONthink is much more than just a document database —
and so there is more than just one way to use it. Here are some of them:
* Create documents with one click, edit them in full screen mode using all
the tools Mac OS X provides and cross-reference them with Wiki-style or
static links.
* Using Mac OS X’s handy Services feature, DEVONthink is the #1 tool for
collecting and organizing info bits and snippets on the Mac, and the Dock
menu makes jotting down notes a one-click experience.
* DEVONthink treats URLs like any other document, so the user can use it to
manage bookmarks and integrate web contents and local documents at ease.
* RSS feeds are the future of how we read news on the screen. DEVONthink
Professional can display all common newsfeeds and lets the user clip
important news directly to your database.
* DEVONthink can keep important e-mails and other project-related documents
together or for creating a versatile e-mail archive.
* DEVONthink makes a perfect repository for frequently used images or can
be a convenient interface to a MP3 library.
* With DEVONthink’s ability to index files without storing them in the
database, one can also use it for cataloging CD/DVD-ROMs.
EDITIONS: DEVONthink comes in two editions optimized for home/semipro and
professional, heavy-duty use. Here are some of the differences of the
Professional edition compared to DEVONthink Personal:
* Multiple databases
* AppleScript and Automator support
* Sheets and records
* More import/export plug-ins
* Download manager / site sucker
* Full screen mode
* Offline archiving of web sites
* Support for read-only volumes (e.g. documentations on CD-ROM)
* Dashboard widgets
Users who purchase or have purchased DEVONthink Personal until end of
September are entitled to upgrade for just the price difference of US$ 35.
CORPORATE BACKGROUND
DEVONtechnologies LLC, founded in 2002, incorporated in 2004 and
headquartered in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA, researches in the field of
semantic and associative data analysis and synthesis, and develops key
applications based on the DEVONtechnology. Named after the Devonian Period,
the DEVONtechnology marks the departure into a new age of data processing.
The main focus of all activities is clearly on using the robust, flexible
and versatile architecture intelligently to create rock-solid applications
for a variety of purposes, including but not limited to databases,
intelligent agents, data-mining, information retrieval and
human-computer-interfaces. More information: www.devon-technologies.com.