[extropy-chat] useful knowledge-base software

[Jef Allbright]

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