My company has clamped down on user software installations, so I had to delete my local Obsidian, Logseq and Tana programs. Tana's web version seems to work pretty well, but neither Obsidian and Logseq currently offer that option. I'm finding Tana useful for productivity, but I have been relying on Obsidian and Logseq for knowledge management and now need to find a replacement. I mostly collect notes, articles, and snippets of useful information that I can categorize/tag and find later through searches. Tana can do that too, but I don't now have the skills or staying power to wade through all the available videos, Slack explanations, etc., to learn how to do that well enough to rely on.

I like the power and the granular categorization and search capabilities of programs like Tana and Tinderbox, but I don't have the querying skills to take full advantage of them. I'm hoping to find something between that level and the very simple search capabilities of other programs that are designed for non-experts. I have a sneaking suspicion that something like Notion may be my best option, but I'm late enough in my career that I'd rather not devote huge amounts of time customizing a program to fit my exact needs. "Good enough" would be good enough at this point.

What tools with robust web versions are people using for knowledge management that might work for what I'm trying to achieve? My practice has been to install a local version on my personal Mac and sync that with the web version that I use on my Windows work computer.

Sorry about the ramble, but thanks for whatever experiences and guidance you can provide.

TheBrain has a robust web version that might work for you. It's not so difficult to use and doesn't require a lot of customisation. It has tags/categories and all the notes are linked. Downside is that it's expensive.
Notion didn't have robust page tagging last time I looked. You had to create a database on a page to enable properties on sub-pages.
A really simple option with tagging is Simplenote.
Once you start looking at outliners, you can choose between Dynalist, Workflowy, ClickUp and Taskade - but I don't like any of them for notetaking.

Thanks. I have used TheBrain for years, but to my dismay the web version doesn't currently display the backlinks and mentions that are visible (and to me extremely valuable) in the desktop version. I have been asking about it for some time, but support can't say if and when that capability will be provided.

I think I need something more along the lines of Capacities, Wallng, X-Tiles or the like. At this point I'm too old to invest in some of the intriguing one-person shops that keep springing up and so often disappear after a while. I kind of like Mem, but it doesn't seem to have gotten much traction.

Given your criteria, I would recommend RemNote, which functions fully both on the web and offline (or at least it has 99% functionality offline).

https://www.remnote.com/

(RemNote emphasizes features like flash cards for students, but it is also a robust knowledge management app that is quite similar to LogSeq.)

Or you could use Roam Research, which functions fully in the browser.

(In theory, you could also use a Windows 365 Cloud PC to access Windows programs via a browser at work, but that's an expensive option.)

Provided you'd be willing to accept the learning curve, Tiddlywiki might be worth a look.
You can either choose to use a version hosted online or use the rather cleverly implemented web app

https://tiddlywiki.com
https://tiddly.packett.cool

Also have a look at this book developed and presented in Tiddlywiki itself by Soren Bjornstad:
https://groktiddlywiki.com/read/

I'll write about it some more in the future, but there is an almost infinite flexibility in this tool.

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Notion could work. I have personal reservations about its initial overwhelming nature, its learning curve for anything that isn't bog-simple, and the open-endedness of the page/dashboard design and endless ways to design and rejigger one's pages (which tends to become a beastly preoccupation for some users). But it's a mature product/service, and there's a lot of instructional video on YouTube. You can make it as simple as you want. Free plan is surprisingly capable, and the $10/month plan offers unlimited file uploads and 30 day page history.

(2)

Atlassian Confluence. Free plan has unlimited pages and spaces, up to 2Gb file storage, and up to 3 whiteboards. They can host via their Confluence Cloud (or your company can self-host via AWS or Azure). Pricing isn't bad: $60/yr for 250Gb storage, $100/yr for 1000 automations/month, unlimited storage and unlimited whiteboards.

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/resources/guides/get-started/overview

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Slite is a simple, secure knowledge base built for teams and collaboration but it can be used single-user. It has a slick web interface, seemingly strong search, and uses end-to-end encryption. There used to be a free plan but now there's only a free trial before charging $8/user/month that gets you unlimited documents and the ability to add integrations with Zapier, Google Drive and others.

https://slite.com

You can try out the document editor here:

https://slite.com/editor

Slab (slab.com) is also well worth a look, with considerable power available for free – we currently use it as an extranet.

I’ve recently started experimenting with Acreom (acreom.com), which is more like an individual notebook (but with sharing capabilities if you want them). The free personal version is very powerful, and not dissimilar to Obsidian (although the latter is more evolved). Excellent task management in particular, but the search engine is also good. It’s available online, but also as apps for pretty much all platforms. Big advantage: you can store your “vault” wherever you like (so e.g. if you’re me, in iCloud), but Acreom will sync it with its own vault setup so that it’s then available to apps on any other platform (so e.g. not just Apple). I’ve got the same vaults running on Mac, iOS, iPadOS and Android.

There’s a nice roadmap, too.

Craft (craft.do) has a very good web app that is almost 100% consistent with its Mac and Windows versions, as well as its mobile versions. Moving being web and non-web is a seamless experience, IMO.

There is a new feature in beta in Craft to add "objects" -- adding a simple set of fields to a document as sort of a "metadata light" option.

Yes, thanks. I use Craft for personal things (travel, beers, etc.), but I have struggled with its long-standing absence of tags. I've been so accustomed to tags, that it's hard to see working without them. I'm familiar with the workaround of using documents for tags, but it seems like a lot of extra work to maintain that approach.

I like many things about Heptabase, but even it's owner says that it's not designed for knowledge management.

As others have noted, Tana's use of a supertag -and-fields approach makes it quite similar to Tinderbox in its ability to slice and dice information many different ways and with a high degree of granularity. If no alternative emerges from the pack, I may have to suck it up and learn how to use Tana better

The jury is still out for me. I like a lot about Reflect, but wanted to pass along that it seems to be a huge memory hog on Chrome -- using between 850MB-1.05G of RAM. Reflect's CEO was very responsive to my query about it, saying that there unfortunately is nothing that can be done about that because of the advanced things (such as end-to-end encryption) that they do on the Web client. That's tough for me to handle on my work computer but maybe not for others.

I second Lucas here. I also went through this dilemma at work where I couldn't use my preferred Obsidian or Logseq. I don't know why RemNote doesn't get more recognition. It's fantastic. Maybe the focus on Spaced Repetition has pigeonholed them as something that's only for students. If you completely ignore the SR, it competes strongly with all the modern PKM platforms (Tana, Roam, Capacities, etc).

However, I've recently realized how powerful Spaced Repetition is as part of a PKM and my life in general. Relying too heavily on a 2nd brain removes too many things from your mental RAM. There's huge value in cementing key facts, ideas, intentions etc in your head. It can help save us from our own nerd spirals.

I've been expanding Spaced Repetition beyond learning technical facts and concepts to...well...everything... and have finally regained traction again after getting lost in the sauce of pkm indecision for years.

Examples of my non-traditional SR Cards:
-Our neighbor kids names
-My middle child's fav color/desert
-that one really good joke
-another really good joke
-old quote to live by
-new quote to live by
-All the goddam jargon at work
-your coworker's favorite kind of donut
-remember you decided to stretch your calves three times a day, is that going well? (if you answer 'no' it'll keep nudging you, if yes then it reminds you in a month or whatever. Awesome way to build and break habits)
-when is the last time you rode your bike, it makes you feel good
-are you still holding your breath a lot without noticing?
-why do we specify that particular kind of stainless steel in this plant and not the other kind?
- keyboard shortcuts
-if your daughter is in a bad mood it's very likely that she's hangry, offer her a snack before engaging

It's especially helpful for locking in the ARBITRARY decisions in your life that you tend to continuously overthink and re-invent.

Example:

-"when i have maintenance done on our cars, I scan the receipt/report to {X} and update the log {here}"

And here's the beautiful thing about RemNote. That arbitrary decision about my car maintenance records lives inside that note where I see all the arguing with my past selves and why I've decided on this path. So when that card pops up I either think "yep that still makes sense" and don't see it for another long while or think "wait, that's dumb, wouldn't Y enable me to automatically blah blah....."

....That's the moment where I usually sabotage myself by being a degenerate CRIMPer and fork my notes in favor of the new hotness. The interrupt of this angsty cycle is being able to click on that spaced repetition card to see it in full context. Then you see the note to yourself from a year ago where you had the exact same brilliant idea as you do right now but decided against because [pretty good reason that's still valid]. Then you go "oh right, yeah this still makes sense", set the card to remind you a little sooner and save yourself from letting such a low-value workflow steal too many brain cycles again.

Obviously nobody needs SR to internalize such trivial idiosyncratic minutiae. You just need to review your notes right? You got your "wife's favorite thing page", your "car maintenance notes", your favorite quotes etc. Just set a reminder to do regular reviews, right? Well one of my degeneracies is I NEVER review my old notes unless they are active and urgent projects. There's reasons for that but it's my reality. I'll angrily dismiss any reminder to review something because future me is never in the mood to review non-urgent fyi's just because younger me scheduled it.

Instead, slipping that stuff into my Spaced Repetition decks guarantees the reviews I've always intended to do. It's easy to pop open a deck a few times a day and go through some flashcards. Its kind of fun how random it can be. I had forgotten how powerful my brain actually is and how fast I can now "lock-in" things that used to slip away. It's a momentum-building feedback loop.

I don't forget the names of my neighbors kids anymore, I'm consistently building upon habits, and I'm learning ever. And, oddly enough, forcing myself to jam more things into my stupid 1st brain has made my 2nd brain more effective and current than it's ever been.

Spaced Repetition isn't just a rote learning tool for med students. In RemNote, you can "lock in" anything you want by flagging it as a card, inline, ensuring that note continues to pay dividends in your life instead of being long forgotten.


Lucas wrote:

Given your criteria, I would recommend RemNote, which functions fully
both on the web and offline (or at least it has 99% functionality
offline).

https://www.remnote.com/

(RemNote emphasizes features like flash cards for students, but it is
also a robust knowledge management app that is quite similar to LogSeq.)

Or you could use Roam Research, which functions fully in the browser.

(In theory, you could also use a Windows 365 Cloud PC to access Windows
programs via a browser at work, but that's an expensive option.)

Interesting, Nathan. Thanks for sharing how you're using spaced repetition. With RemNote, the shortcoming I've discovered is that, for the sake of efficiency, the developers have chosen to make search only work for full words or the front of words, but not for the middle or end of words:

https://help.remnote.com/en/articles/6030721-searching-your-knowledge-base

"Search terms match only at the front of words in your Rems: searching for cat finds Rems containing cat or catenary, but not dedicate."