Scrybe, that web-based PIM I was dying to try, has released a major beta revision which now includes the widely anticipated ThoughtPad functionality.

In Scrybe there is a Planner pane which contains your calendar and tasks, and now the ThoughtPad pane which contains web clippings, or simply text and images as notes. These notes can be organized into different Labels (essentially tags), making it easier to locate relevant information when you're looking for it. Basic formatting like bold, italics and bullet points are included, but this is definitely not a full-featured word processor.

The ThoughtPad includes a browser at the bottom of the window that provides thumbnails of the clippings you have stored. This can be useful when scrolling through a number of related clippings to quickly locate a specific one, particularly if you're like me and your mind works in a particularly visual manner.

Yet again the latest update of Scrybe feels quite polished, and is very much usable. If I have any misgivings about using Scrybe as my productivity application of choice, it would be the user interface decision to confine task management to a relatively small corner of the Planner pane. As much as I need to keep an eye on the hard landscape of appointments I have scheduled, I typically find myself spending more time managing the tasks that need to fit in between those scheduled appointments. Working in a tiny corner of an application 80% of the time feels awkward, and demotes Scrybe (for me, at least) to the status of Worthy Productivity Application, but just not for me.