Topic: Seeking for don't-forget-stuff software

[InCreator]

Right, this is difficult to explain.
What I need is something that I can use to remember stuff. Like things I've subscribed via Paypal and pay some monthly fee. Passwords and CD-keys. Links I don't need daily in my bookmarks, but might need at some point in future.

OR for better example,
when I released Pall last year, it very quickly became evident that if you make accounts on every digital app store, make various threads in many forums and send e-mail to outlets and websites, you need to remember when and where you did those things, what did you write to whom, under which name you registered as and so on and so on. With even minor attempt at marketing, the amount of stuff to keep track of grows very quickly (out of hand).

First idea was e-mail. I've had same e-mail address for ages and I just kept relevant e-mails. From forums and sites and whatnot. Keeping old e-mail felt like a good idea, but I learned the hard way that e-mail is very fragile - some crappy forum gets overrun with spam bots, your e-mail goes into some spam list, and say bye to your e-mail. No spam filter will hold back the flood of crap you'll be getting every day and after some time, you'll just give up. Now I'm wiser and I have 3 e-mail addresses I use to sign up (why do we have to sign up EVERYWHERE those days?!), assessing by the importance and trustworthiness of the website. But e-mail isn't quite what solves everything.

So I've done this (or regretted not doing this) by making buttload of .txt files. They aren't all that good idea in retrospect, I would much more prefer something more... advanced. That can have alarms and reminders and tabs and search and organizing and stuff.
A personal organizer perhaps?

But something that's not just crappy Outlook Calendar that no one uses, but something cool, with some help with management and more suited to stuff I described above. Perhaps even encryption and password thingy to keep the Pandora's box closed.

Does something like this exist?
And yes, I know it's a bad idea to keep passwords in written form, but if you register in 40 forums in a single day, you kind of need it.

[Stupot]

You say you've tried Notepad?
Have you tried a notepad?

[Khris]

What about OneNote?

[Wyz]

Not really what you are looking for but I'm going to tell you my approach. I can't really recommend it but it might work for some; it does for me. It especially works for people that are forgetful when it comes to agendas and rosters.
I write everything down on a single sheet of paper; yes everything so that requires abbreviations and a little bit of thinking. This sheet resides permanently on my desk and is there solely as a reminder, not a reference. It has dates of all deadlines and events, a general todo list (rather projects that I'm currently working on than indept things I have to do; again not a reference just a reminder) and general notes like phone numbers and names. Basically anything I need to remember in the most breve form possible without getting cryptic. At mornings (or during the day) I have a look and memorize anything that is relevant for that day. This keeps me organized and prevents anything slipping through the cracks as often happened when I was relying on agendas. The trick is that all is in one place and not hidden on the next page. Now that leaves out a couple of things: login details you should never write down but ok if you must: type them out and put them in a nice binder and put that in a locked drawer. That is by no means safe but should provide some layers of protection. There are ways to remember passwords and have a system but that is for a different thread.

I started out with a piece of A4 paper but these days I have enough space using memo pad sheets. Why bother? Well when you really think about the things you need to remember you will remember them better. So less is more. And when they are full or there is too much old stuff on it you get a fresh one.

I hope you got some inspiration from that although it's probably not what you're looking for.

[RickJ]

I can recommend Treeline as an information organizer.  It's hierarchical and customizable.  Treeline is XML based and can be exported to an HTML document.  So links, bookmarks, etc can be embedded in the info and then accessed later.
http://treeline.bellz.org/scrnsht.html

For alarms, reminders, and todo list I use Google Keep. It sends notifications to my phone and the notes are accessible from anywhere.
https://keep.google.com/

[InCreator]

Old pen'n'paper method doesn't quite work for me if everything's digital and most of the things I need to remember are urls or copypaste bits of text or keywords to search for and so on.

Like if you market a game, you need to write reviewers and make forum posts. And you generally don't want to copy-paste same game description everywhere, so you'll make few versions of the text. And use this here and that there.
And you also have to remember which forums you registered at and so on. Also game ideas and code bits that might be useful some day... etc. So it's digital information I need to keep mostly.

Treeline looks interesting, thanks RickJ. I'm also exploring if Google Docs has advanced far enough from last time I used it (ages ago) - data in cloud and accessible from handhelds is always nice feature to have. Not for passwords and sensitive stuff though, but Google account is protected by password ANYWAY. Everything should beat notepad .txt files WinRARed with password, I think. Or perhaps nothing out there will.

[Alberth]

I don't have the needs that you have, but I would make a directory tree with 'topics', like contact names, site names, etc etc.

Inside each directory I'd make files of what I sent, of the form <date>_<description>.<extension> like in directory "forums/ags", make a file "20150808_ags_dont_forget_stuff.msg" with the text before I paste it. Rather than use the forum or whatever you're supposed to enter text in, write the text/stuff in your own file editor, and simply copy/paste from your editor to the site. That way you always have an exact copy of what you wrote. You could start off with some lines of context, eg what url precisely, who you wrote to, topic text, etc.

Date of the form yyyymmdd, as that sorts nicely (just look at the directory contents to get an overview of what happened when), and adding the date to the filename means I can move the file later without worrying about creation or update dates of the file itself.

Maybe you want to add the answers too.

For things I can/should do, I have a task manager. Some sort of "issue" tracker would work too.

[straydogstrut]

For passwords I use https://agilebits.com/onepassword. It has a customisable password generator, separate vaults to organise your passwords, a built-in secure web browser, a weak/old password warning system and the ability to create secure notes.

I only need to remember the 1password login: all the rest are accessible from the Mac menu bar (1password is also for Windows), at the login prompt of apps supporting 1password, or from the 1password application itself. In most cases I'll just select the login from the menu bar, the website will launch, and I'll be logged in.

For code samples, an app I've previously used is http://snippets.me. They've changed their logo since I last used it but think it's this one. It has syntax handling which is nice.