Evaluating some new tools

I was pleased that we went over concept mapping in class, getting some practice with mind maps and checking out some new websites (comapping.com, mindmeister.com). I thought I'd look a bit deeper at these sources, along with some other information management websites that are starting to become popular in schools and workplaces. A few impressions:

37signals: Love the visual nature of this website, home of small-business solutions Backpack, Highrise, and other "make work easier" systems. 37signals has specific tools and interfaces for different types of data: people / important contacts have a system, tasks / projects have a system, and so on. I liked seeing all the different methods of handling information. Like 37signals, my ideal system would incorporate many different tools to allow for robust, versatile data management.

Jira: I used this task management system during my summer internship at Linden Lab. They've taken advantage of Jira to make an enormous task system, well-organized and indexable by identification number, title, category, or asignee. Jira can accommodate a massive amount of information (there must be thousands of tasks in Linden's development category alone). Scalability is very important, and I admire that Jira can be used by a single person wanting to store their daily to-do list, or by a large company like Linden trying to manage the entire realm of Second Life.

Comapping: I watched the introductory video and cruised through some sample maps from Comapping. Favorite feature: Comapping allows lots of file types, including pictures, links, and text. This would be very useful for an integrative system, rather than limiting someone to purely text. Main concern: the maps have a tendency to become unwieldy and confusing as they expand, which harms their scalability.

Google Wave: New collaborative conversation tool from Google. I watched a chunk of their long introductory presentation, which described the features of the new system, and ways it can encourage collaborative work. I like the simple interface and real-time updates, and I think the ability to allow multiple contributors could add a new, interesting dimension to the system I'm imagining.
MindMeister: We used this website in class to construct big idea webs. I love the concept of organizing ideas visually in space, instead of just a boring drop-down list. Like Comapping, however, MindMeister tends to generate large, confusing maps, and it's difficult to jump cleanly from one place to the other. I also found it limiting that these maps (as far as I can tell) only include text inputs.

Wikis / Blogs / Google Docs: I considered a handful of other websites that were designed for one purpose (like word processing or journaling) and can be appropriated for other purposes of information management: for example, someone might use Google Docs to store a list of important links, or start a blog with lists of key resources for a paper. These flexible websites allow for a wide variety of different uses, but it would be nice if I could develop something with more affordances for specific information needs, like bookmarks, sources, contacts, etc. I'm picturing the specific tools of 37signals with the versatility of Google Docs and the scalability of Jira (sound impossible yet?).

EndNote: I've been using this program to store resources for my honors thesis. Its design is barebones and simple: big spreadsheet-style assortment of items, organized by title, author, year of publication, etc. The program conveniently formats your sources for you, according to the formatting convention you choose. Perfect example of a program designed to handle one type of information. Now if only I could expand it to include other types of information (links, videos...) and present the information in a more appealing way.