Shootout: Pluck vs. Onfolio

Both of these tools install into the browser and provide the ability to search, collect, organize, and subscribe to (via RSS) information. Check the Office weblog for a recent review of Onfolio . Both applications provide the ability to publish your information to share research with others.

Pluck (above) is a combined search and RSS tool. Pluck's publishing paradigm uses a hosted web server that allows you share a personal Pluck folder by making it public for others to view online or subscribe to via RSS. AT DEMO, Pluck announced the Pluck Online Edition - a free, web-based version of their solution accessible from any browser. Cool DEMO line: "Pluck is available for three easy payments of free, free, and free."

Onfolio demonstrated the business case of an investment banker (Steve). Beginning with the integrated RSS feed reader, Steve searches his overnight feeds, finds a relevant article and, with one click, e-mailing it to a client. Then Steve shares web pages with colleagues by saving a local copy of an interesting web page and then sharing it with another Onfolio user. Steve also adds RSS feeds to his Reading List for later review and then uses Onfolio's built-in search to find an article he had filed based on keywords and metadata attached to the article. Onfolio also showed how a snippet of text from a web page can be captured, highlighted, and annotated. Steve set up a persistent search against a set of criteria that dynamically updates as new content arrives in the aggregator. Finally, Steve dragged and dropped content from Onfolio directly into a Word document he was building.