Key Concepts of Omea
A succinct conceptual summary of Omea might be:
"Track, organize, and find resources on your PC."
Key Concepts of Omea Reader
A succinct conceptual summary of Omea Reader might be:
"Track, organize, find, and access online information resources on your PC."
Let's look briefly at these main concepts.
What are "Resources"?
Basically, the term resources means any kind of internet content stored on your computer: files, messages, newsgroup articles, RSS or ATOM feed posts, and even downloaded web pages. Omea ReaderOmea Pro enables you to work with the following types of resources:
- E-mail messages (Mail tab)
- Instant Messages (IM tab)
- Newsgroups and Newsgroup articles (News tab)
- Web pages and bookmarks (Web tab)
- RSS and Atom feeds and posts (Feeds tab)
- Documents and other files (Files tab)
- Tasks (Tasks tab)
- Clippings
- Contacts
- Contacts (from Newsgroups)
- Annotations
Omea 2.0 supports e-mail from Microsoft Outlook, import of Web bookmarks (Favorites) from Microsoft Internet Explorer©, Mozilla©, Firefox©, and Opera© and instant messages from ICQ and Miranda.
Omea Reader 2.0 only supports import of Web bookmarks (Favorites) from Microsoft Internet Explorer©, Mozilla©, Firefox©, and Opera©.
Tracking Resources
Omea ReaderOmea Pro tracks your resources using special indexing technology. The index information is stored in a highly efficient database that both tracks information in real time, and facilitates searching. The indexing process in Omea ReaderOmea Pro is rather like the engine in your car: you don’t need to understand the inner workings in order to drive it, and you don't need to deal with it all the time.
Indexing is mostly automatic. It happens behind the scenes as you process various kinds of resources using Omea Pro. The only time most people will need to think about indexing is the first time they start Omea Pro. Then, a special "Setup Wizard" appears that guides you through a process that tells Omea Pro what you want it to track in terms of file system folders, e-mail program folders, and Web bookmarks. As you become more familiar with Omea Pro, you may want to make additions or adjustments to the indexing configuration. You can do this any time using the Options dialog.
Incoming resources are automatically tracked as they arrive on your PC, provided they land in one of the areas you've told Omea to track (you can specifically exclude some places, such as a temp folder or Outbox). Once tracked, resources can be found in searches. However, you will probably want to use Omea to help you organize them as they come in.
Indexing is mostly automatic. It happens behind the scenes as you process various kinds of resources using Omea Reader. The only time most people will need to think about indexing is the first time they start Omea Reader. Then, it's a good idea to check the Options dialog and set the Internet options for Favorites, and Web Pages (and Mozilla Bookmarks if you use a Mozilla browser). As you become more familiar with Omea Reader, you may want to make additions or adjustments to the indexing configuration. You can do this any time using the Options dialog.
Downloaded resources are automatically tracked as they arrive on your computer. Once tracked, resources can be found in searches. However, you will probably want to use Omea Reader to help you organize information as well.
Organizing Resources
Omea ReaderOmea Pro provides features for organizing your resources in a variety of ways that you can use separately or in combination. The emphasis is on organization that is meaningful to you, rather than to the computer operating system or some application program.
- Categories: User-defined tags or labels that can be used to categorize resources in some way that’s meaningful for you. You can create your own highly flexible, cross-referenced filing system using Categories. See Organizing using Categories for details.
- Views: Lists of resources matching some conditions which were specified by the user, or automatically selected and updated by Omea ReaderOmea Pro or by you. For example, a view named Today would include only resources received or processed on the current date. See Organizing using Views for details.
- Links: Relationships between resources. Some are created automatically by Omea ReaderOmea Pro; you can define others between resources to create associations that are meaningful and useful to you. See Organizing using Links for details.
- Workspaces: A named collection of resources that pertain to some organizational context that you decide on, such as a project, an activity, or people. In essence, a Workspace is like a filter that enables you to work with some subset of all possible resources in a context that means something to you. See Organizing using Workspaces for details.
- Tasks: A record, that you create, of something you need to do at some future time. The unique thing about Tasks in Omea Pro is that they can contain links to all the resources of any type that you need to access in order to do them. You can create a Task directly from any resource. See Organizing using Tasks for details.
- Rules: Means that will help you to automate your incoming resources. Rules in Omea are much like those in Outlook but in Omea you can benefit from much greater variety of rule settings which you can easily customize. See Organizing using Rules, Using formatting rules, Setting notifications and Reapplying rules for details.
- Annotations: A note which you can add to almost any resource in Omea. See Using Annotations.
- Shortcuts: Means which provide you one click access to the resources which may be stored very deep in Omea. See Organizing using shortcuts for details.
- Flags: Means for attracting attention to items which require some follow up. See Organizing using Flags for details.
Finding Resources
Even if you've gone to great lengths to organize your resources, it can still be difficult to quickly lay your hands on exactly what you want, especially after some time has passed.
That’s where Omea ReaderOmea Pro steps in with it’s robust Search capability. Essentially a "search engine for your PC", Omea ReaderOmea Pro can quickly locate the indexed resources on your computer just as internet search engines can quickly locate indexed content on the web.
Unlike the Windows Explorer search, Omea Pro can find more than one kind of resource that relates to your query: files, messages, newsgroup articles, etc. Simple keyword searching is always at hand in the Search box in the main window. You can narrow down searches, limiting them to certain resource types and/or conditions using Advanced search.
Omea Reader searches can find more than one kind of resource that relates to your query: both newsgroup articles and web pages, for example. Simple keyword searching is always at hand in the Search box in the main window. You can narrow down searches, limiting them to certain resource types and/or conditions using Advanced search. When focused on the list of a particular type of resource... articles in a newsgroup, for example... you can quickly search the listing with Quick Find
The keywords, conditions, and results of any search are automatically saved to a special View called Search Results. With the context menu of this View, you can convert it a custom View. This in effect "saves" the search so you can run it again with a single click in the Views and Categories pane.
For more information see Searching Your Computer's Resources.