Personal Information Manager
A Personal Information Manager (English for personal information manager ), short- PIM is software that organizes and manages personal data such as contacts, appointments, tasks and notes. He represents the electronic version of an organizer
Features and Functions
PIM software can be designed for individual users as well as for use in network (LAN or WAN). For network solutions, user management plays an important role, because each user wants to manage its own data, and not all users to view or edit all the data. Furthermore PIM software plays an important role on handheld computers, PDAs, smart phones and even mobile phones.
Since many different data to be managed, especially high demands are made to the memory management of the PIM application. From the user's point of view also the ergonomics of the user interface is important. Well-known examples of PIM interfaces are:
- Rolodex: PIMs this type are based on rotary index card systems.
- Filofax: PIMs this type are based on ring- book-like paper organizers.
- Outliner: PIMs this type use a tree-like navigation structure similar to the structure of a web page on the internet.
Requirements
In addition to basic functions for addresses, appointments, tasks and notes management other functions of PIMs are often required:
- Support for user-defined data fields in the address management
- Possibility of storing images and their management
- Alarm at certain times of appointments and birthdays
- Import and export data
- Synchronization or data exchange with mobile devices such as BlackBerry, Palm and Pocket PC devices and mobile phones
- Management of electronic documents as faxes, e -mails, RSS feeds or newsgroup messages.
Common PIMs
Market situation
For years, the PIM software segment is dominated by Microsoft Outlook. This program is part of the Office package Microsoft Office and correspondingly widespread. There are also alternative proprietary products for professional use.
The free office suites OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice do not contain their own PIM, but there are alternative PIM software such as Kontact, Evolution and Mozilla Thunderbird with the extension ( add-on ) Lightning as a substitute.
Web PIMs
So-called Web - PIMs are servers that are used via web browser. Once you have logged in with a password, one finds a familiar working environment with all its addresses and dates.
The main advantage is that the availability of the data is not dependent on the availability of the personal computer. A web PIM on the Internet is worldwide usable with any device that can access the Internet and display Web pages. The disadvantage is that the availability of data depends on the availability of the server and the network connection.
An early solution of this type is Open Mail. GroupWise offers the use via web browser since 1996. Since 1998, there has also Outlook Web Access. Meanwhile, there are also corresponding software that is free or even open source, for example phpgroupware. Common to all is the additional advantage that they can manage the data of several users who can therefore share data.
Meanwhile, there are also free services that can be combined into a usable PIM via web browser, such as Google and Yahoo on the Internet. However, the use of such a service requires a high degree of confidence in its integrity.
The dynamic development of web applications means that web PIMs grow together with other web applications. So, for example, combined Airset the functions of a PIM with which one or more social networks and cloud computing.