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Well, the folks who create ClearContext have announced a beta of version 2. I've been testing it now for a few weeks. Before that I exchanged quite a bit of mail with Deva, Brad and Frank (as well as some brunches and dinners!). They took a lot of my feedback, suggestions and bug reports to heart.

There are quite a few new features in this version, but probably the biggest changes are targeted at folks who use some form of Getting Things Done. However, the product is very generic by not adhering to some of the more unfortunate aspects of GTD that the Netcentrics software is unforgiving about.

I'll highlight some of the feature's that I've found myself using the most:

Defer

In Getting Things Done you learn about the tickler file. Well the NetCentrics software doesn't really even attempt to solve this problem, it only allows you to snooze a message for a certain number of days. ClearContext v2 allows you to defer a message by a number of days, or to a specific day and time. This has come in really handy for me for the following types of emails:

1. I have to follow up on something at a certain date/time. I've either asked some one else to do something or I just won't get to something till later. This acts as a great reminder system. Since my inbox has few few messages in it then I notice these reminders quickly.
2. Shipping noticed and the like. Typically I want to discard these emails, but I need them for a short period of time. This way I can just make it go away for a while and when it comes back I can defer it again, or delete it.

This feature helps me keep both my inbox and my task list clean of clutter. In the "classic" GTD way, you must add such an item to your calendar or task list. No thanks, because I am poor about doing my weekly review, these things get lost in my task list.

I think this feature alone is worth the upgrade. It works well, and helps me manage my inbox.

Task

This feature is almost 100% identical to the program I wrote to simply create a task from an email. The method is far cleaner than the NetCentrics GTD addin for the following reasons:

1. The original email is attached to the task. This allows you to later reply or reference the email from within the task. No funny linking stuff that Netcentrics does.
2. A small snippet of text from the email is included in the body of the task. This allows you to quickly understand the context. Also if you sync tasks to your Pocket PC/Smartphone you can also get an idea of what the task is.
3. You can assign a topic to a task. I then use categories to assign the Action like @Home, @Office etc and use the standard Outlook views to see your tasks grouped by Action.
4. The subject of the task is canonical (stripped of RE:, FW: etc).
5. You can optionally then delete the email from the task, or file it to the Topic folder.

This feature is pretty much implemented the way I want. All that is needed is a few small tweaks (I would like Topic to be replicated to the Category field as well so it appears on my Pocket PC.

Schedule

Like task you can turn an email into an Appointment. I don't use this much (never have). My Calendar is way to busy, and blocking off time to do things never works at Microsoft.

Action View

This is a huge part of the upgrade. I haven't really spent enough time in this feature yet as it's incredibly feature rich. I plan on doing so in the coming weeks.

Misc

Other than the things I've mentioned, there are many bug fixes, and changes under the hood. I've found CC v2 to be as stable if not more stable than v1. The Views support was beefed up, and I have access to more reliable and desirable default views. I haven't had to mess with them at all yet.

The bottom line for me is that this upgrade has allowed me to completely ditch my own GTD software that I wrote (I didn't need yet another piece of software I developed to deal with) as well as the Netcentrics GTD add-in which I stopped using long ago (I find it overbearing and too prescriptive for how I work).

If you are a current ClearContext user, try the beta. If not, there will be a few different versions of the product to chose from in the future, and one of them will be free!