[extropy-chat] useful knowledge-base software

[Samantha Atkins]

I find the notion that Outlook deserves to be called a "Personal Information Manager" quite distressing.   It is a barely useable email program, when it doesn't choose to lock up and ignoring that it encrypts all "your" mail in a funny format difficult to do anything else with.  As a task manager it sucks rocks.  There is not even a simple hierachy or an interdependency management.  The Calendar functionality is useable with similar caveats to mail.  Notes?  They would be a lot better if I could attach them anywhere and organize them more deeply.  But all of these functionalities together even when well done are not what I need as a PIM.

I need a tool that will keep track of the cookie crumbs of web pages, docs, searches, images, notes jotted down, mutterings and ravings, wild ideas and tentative integrations that we all do as we swim in this information sea.  The call is always to see/sense more, integrate more, swim more swiftly or winnow more finely.   I need clean interfaces that I can ask real questions of and have the width and breadth of information traveled and half digested, by self and others at will, and on the net at large, used on my/our behalf to find the answer or that which an answer may be approached from.  It is an open framework that I can hang not just new documents and notes and emails etc upon but that I can fill with concepts and association fragments and that can extract (ultimately) concepts and associations and factoids out of any/all input.   Full text search is a bare beginning.  It is a place where I can hang new techniques, facts, ideas as I learn them and have them associate an!
d coalesce in new and sometimes fruitful ways.  It is where I can hang every mental tool and find it when need arises.

That would be a PIM.  Outlook and Chandler are mere toys for some small fragment of what is needed. 

- s


On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:13:13 -0800
"Jef Allbright" <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:

> rick wrote:
> > Have any of you seen this:
> >
> > http://www.bitsmithsoft.com/?source=P22020300071500
> >
> > it is somewhat like a remembrance agent program that I worked on
> > several years ago -- but it does not try to be an "agent". I think I
> > may end up using this application to store all my personal articles,
> > clippings, data and etc.
> >
> 
> 
> I used to use PersonalBrain for this, but gave it up because of the
> proprietary and closed database structure.  I didn't want to trust my
> knowledge base to that.  This is the same nifty-looking relational topic
> display as on Kurzweil's site.  I just looked again, and it appears they
> might now have a utility to export the database in some form.  It still
> appears that they're only interested in really big corporate accounts
> though.
> 
> At work I use Outlook 2000 for this purpose.  It has the advantage of a
> consistent user interface, and I can easily (for the most part) drag and
> drop between email, tasks, and Word documents.  Each item can be assigned
> multiple categories, the whole thing syncs nicely with my Palm using
> KeySuite, and my work stuff is available on the web via Exchange Server.
> 
> For personal knowledge capture and sharing, I'm mainly using my web site,
> www.jefallbright.net, coded in PHP and MySQL using Drupal with some patches
> and enhancements.  It allows me to use a large set of keywords, relate them
> in parent-child-sibling fashion, and it's completely open so I can grow it
> and modify it as I wish.  It serves well as a web-based scrap book to share
> on topics that interest me, along with some of my thoughts and comments.
> I've also been *amazed* at how many people have subscribed and receive daily
> notifications of (a portion of) new content.
> 
> I've long been intrigued by the notion of a remembrance agent, but Brad
> Rhodes' implementation doesn't run well under Windows (last update was in
> 2001) and I don't have time to code something better myself.
> 
> I also participated in beta-testing of a product called Find, that attempted
> to index all email and other documents on a Windows machine and make them
> available via realtime keyword search, but it was extremely resource-hungry
> and it appears the company has gone out of business.  I understand Microsoft
> plans to provide a database driven file system which should be a good step
> in that direction.
> 
> I'm looking forward to Chandler, especially because it's open source, and
> it's being implemented and modifiable in Python.
> 
> - Jef
> www.jefallbright.net
> 
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