Access to TB Info on Mobile devices

I’m using TB to track connections with people. This means calls, email info and conversations as well as items I need to discuss with them is all contained in the TB.

I would love to have access to this information on my iPad. I find increasingly when meeting with people, that the iPad is less intrusive than my macair. I’m not so much concerned with updating or adding data, there are a myraid of apps I can make notes in, but I would like to be able to see my notes on a particular individual. My one rather large constraint is security and so storing the data in the cloud is not an option as this is sensitive or personal information.

‘Cloud’ is itself a somewhat elastic term. I get the point about it being “unknown server in unknown jurisdiction” but mobile devices and the apps on them aren’t built, by design, around use of local data in the same way a laptop is. Whilst mobile devices do store files such as photos and music, there isn’t generally a notion of a local filestore as in the Documents folder on your Mac; such data is generally accessed via the network and/or is stored in the cloud.

If there were a Tinderbox file viewer (there have been some iOS experiments in recent years) you still have the issue of loading the data files. IIRC, experiments thus far used Dropbox (IIRC!) i.g. a cloud resource, to access the data.

Can one not have a ‘private’ cloud? I guess expense might be an issue.

A private, secure-sync (“cloudless”) solution is DEVONthink on the desktop + DEVONthink to Go on iOS. Albeit an additional cost over and above your Tinderbox investment, these sister apps can sync via Bonjour on your local network. (Or via encrypted sync via Dropbox, WebDAV, etc., but that’s not required.)

DEVONthink and Tinderbox are good friends – notes can be dragged from DEVONthink to Tinderbox with $URL populated automatically to link back to the DEVONthink note, or copy-pasted from Tinderbox to DEVONthink with DEVONthink’s URL property populated to link back to your Tinderbox document.

I imagine a HIPPA compliant cloud would be acceptable. I do have DTPO and use it store store most of my data. I’ve played around with DTTG. I imagine though much of the usefulness of TB would be lost in translation.

I’m not able to the TB > DTPO to work. I’ve attempted to copy (CMD+C) a note in TB and past (CMD+V) into DTPO, but nothing happens. How do they play nice?

In DEVONthink to make a document from a Tinderbox note (or from anything on the clipboard) use their File > New > From Clipboard command or ⌘N. If multiple Tinderbox notes are copied at time same time with ⌘C, then ⌘N in DEVONthink makes that many new documents in your database.

This is covered in the release notes for each app.

@PaulWalters Many thanks for that. It certainly is an easy way to get notes out. I’m not sure it will work as hierarchy is not maintained. But as a dump of notes from TBX, this is worth remembering.

There is a way to “run” Tinderbox on iOS devices. I’ve used the Parallels Access app quite successfly to display and demonstrate Tinderbox on my iPad. Functionality is similar to running GoToMyPC. TB is actually running on your Mac somewhere. In addition, Parallels Access makes Tinderbox (and other OSX apps) behave largely as if they were designed to run on a tablet. That is, you can use taps and other gestures in place of mouse motions much as you would for any native iOS app.

Of course there are caveats:

  • You must have Internet access

  • Your host Mac must be running (not in sleep mode)

  • An annual subscription costs $20/year

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The best thing I’ve found so far is to export my Tinderbox document to HTML and then import / index the results in DEVONthink.

As of today, if you index the results, links between exported notes work fine on DEVONthink Mac, but not when they’re synced to DTTG. That said, search works fine on DTTG, and of course you can navigate if you’re familiar enough with the folder structure.

My main caveat is that I treat exported notes as ephemeral within DEVONthink. If I change a Tinderbox note’s Name or Container, then the index file goes missing in DEVONthink – so I don’t use DT’s “copy item link”, or aliases, or in general rely on notes being permanent within DEVONthink.

It is useful for taking my Tinderbox info with me at least.


Site note: I really want Tinderbox and DEVONthink to have a baby. They both do so much of what I want, neither doing all of what I want, and the friction between them causes me a lot of frustration.