Capture your ideas

IdeaMason uses a dynamic, multi-dimensional structure called a Portfolio to serve as a complete knowledge management storehouse for all of your ideas, sources, cited materials, and research administration activities. You can store as much information as you want, subdivide materials by project, activity, category and status. And our flexible interface design lets you customize your workspace to fit your specific needs and workflow.

All of your materials and ideas are in one place, and each is stored independently of its context within a written work. This gives you the ability to build from one idea to another as your interest in a subject grows across a series of projects in a single portfolio.

IdeaMason's link management technologies let you create links between related materials and ideas and even link related PDF documents, websites, and externals files to a single idea to create sophisticated, subtle, insightful relationships and bring a new perspective to your work.

Store your research, citations, and sources

IdeaMason makes documenting your sources and sourced materials (e.g., quotations, paraphrases) quick, easy, and painless. Our Source Wizards lead you step-by-step to collect information about a source and then automatically generate the bibliography citations for you.

IdeaMason lets cite as you write associating and referencing one or more sources with a single idea in one Dashboard with an instant view of the final citation in any of the major bibliographical styles [MLA, APA, Harvard Citations (both UK and Austrialian variations supported), Chicago Notes-Bibliography, Chicago Author-Date].

We fully support your research management workflow with tools to create your own virtual library, link PDF documents, related websites, and externals files. And take a look at the Research List, one of our most popular features, for all those books and even websites you can't afford to lose track of. track.

Our Source on Web feature will also help you manage and later reference important material found on the web. (See our video tutorial on web research)

Outline, Organize, and Compose

IdeaMason's unique Composition technology is unlike anything available in writing tools today. It provides an easy-to-use platform where you can simply drag-and-drop materials from your portfolio as you organize and outline a draft. Each composition is a subset of your materials, interlaid with organizational elements and text, and arranged in whatever pattern you choose.

This innovation is a dynamic environment that lies between your ideas and materials and the final layout of your written draft. Each Composition works with pointers to or clones of individual items seamlessly connected to the portfolio, allowing you to easily re-organize, modify, and re-purpose material whenever you want.

Create a fully-formatted draft document

IdeaMason's Composition tool helps you to create virtual organizations of your material using an outlining-like metaphor. You can watch your draft grow as you add materials to an outline, editing items and adding transitional statements and in-text remarks as you work towards finalizing your written document.

When you are finished organizing you will have much more than an outline! As you add material to the Composition, it takes your references with you and builds your bibliography and citations on the fly. And when you are ready IdeaMason performs the ultimate task - creating a formatted document complete with all your material, organizational elements, sections, foot/endnotes, parenthetical citations, and a complete bibliography. Your Composition is automatically transcribed into either Microsoft Word or RTF Editor of your choice allowing you to continue the editing process in a familiar environment as you finalize your draft.