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Wiki -- Why?
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Posted by Kenneth Rhee
Sep 2, 2006 at 03:28 PM
Daly,
I agree with you that formatting is the stumbling block for me. Perhpas I’m just used to doing things in the WYSWYG mode these days. I agree with others that linking and free-flowing structure are the key strengths of Wiki, but no matter how many times I tried Connectedtext or NoteStudio, I always abandoned it for another program that offers the WYSWYG edit mode. I need to keep track of a lot of information, and my main needs are quick entry and organizing, excellent search and export(file/print) capability, and ConnectedText and NoteStudio seem to be good at search/export, but fails me greatly when it comes to quick entry (with formatting) and quick organizing (category and keyword assignment). Also it should tax the system performance and resouces a lot since I’m running it 24/7 while the PC is on.
For now, I found Evernote 1.5 to be the best of the bunch when it comes to meeting my needs. YMMV however.
Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 2, 2006 at 03:53 PM
Daly,
Think of Zoot and BrainStorm - two unique programs that have a lot of power for harnessing and working with information. Both are plain text, not WYSIWYG. Unless you work in a field that is highly visual (photography, design, etc.), chances are that most of your information is textual.
The idea of just starting to type (or paste) stuff in without regard to structure has an organic appeal that’s missing from very structured approaches to managing information. The structure evolves over time in a wiki, and you don’t have to make any up-front decisions about categorization, etc. And you can actually link to things that don’t even exist yet. I’ve always found the wiki approach well suited to freeform brainstorming and thinking; it’s not the best approach for a set of well-structured records that belong in a database. There is also the whole online collaborative tradition of wikis, and while a personal wiki doesn’t have the collaboration, if you are used to using web-based wikis, having your own probably comes more naturally than if you come from some other background.
Think of presentation or formatted display as a separate step - if you need that, most wiki software lets you get your stuff into a format more conducive for formatting, but daily usage removes all of the extraneous font menus, paragraph alignment dialogs, etc., and lets you focus on quickly working with your information. Wikis aren’t really meant to be word processors. I think the concept is to be fast, simple, and focused on building a small personal web of information rather than adding formatting that is often extraneous. The mechanism for hyperlinking is also very quick and doesn’t interrupt the flow of your typing; other info managers that have hyperlinking usually make you go through some sort of dialog just to add a link.
There are also a lot of benefits to plain text data storage: easy to copy and paste among different applications without losing anything, easy to script and automate using any number of scripting languages, less vulnerable to becoming outdated as technology progresses (I can still open plain text files I have from 1994, but information I had in, say Ascend, is no longer accessible to me). Of course, not all wiki apps use plain text storage, but many of them do.
Of course, it all depends on your needs and usage patterns, but I’ll note that even in programs that have formatting (like Ultra Recall), I hardly ever use bold, italics, etc. - 99% of the time I am just typing what I need to remember or do, etc., and the ability to format doesn’t add anything to that ability. On the flip side, if I’m preparing a document that needs to be well-formatted and read by others, I’ll inevitably end up in a word processor even if a lot of the source text comes from other programs. There are times when a little formatting for personal use is helpful, which is why I won’t try to dissuade Zoot from eventually having RTF, but to me formatting seems like a little tiny bit of gravy and the real meat is the actual text.
The BrainStorm “namesakes” feature actually seems very close to wiki-like links to me, perhaps more so than it seems like “cloning.” The difference is that a whole line has to be a “link,” not just a word or two within a line, but the combination of BrainStorm’s outliner-like features with wiki-like links may be very unique (also consider that even BrainStorm essentially has an edit mode and view mode). I also found Tkoutline at http://tkoutline.sourceforge.net/wiki/ to be an interesting combination of single-pane outliner with the ability to add wiki-style links *between outlines.* Another interesting approach…
Chris
Posted by Kenneth Rhee
Sep 2, 2006 at 10:12 PM
Chris,
I don’t think there is one best information manager that I know of. I think 80% of my information is plain texts, but I do keep tables, bullet and numbered lists on many of my notes. I just think the extra formatting requirement gets in the way for me, although ConnectedText does have tool bar buttons for some formatting functions.
Also, once I started to create the links, then some of my notes gets buried so deep inside the links that I have to utilize the search function to locate the notes. So, the advantage of Wiki disappears for me in that regard.
Anyway, I’m not here to tout whether one form of system is better than the other but to capture my experience in using these programs.
One thing I find great about Evernote is multiple methods to organize my notes (dates, manual and automatic categories, keywords, etc). It also has a great search and export features now.
When Zoot becomes 32-bit and support rich texts, I might go back to it as my main organizer.
Ken
Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 2, 2006 at 10:31 PM
Kenneth Rhee wrote:
>Anyway, I’m not here to tout
>whether one form of system is better than the other but to capture my experience in
>using these programs.
Kenneth, same here. In fact, I’m not using a wiki at present but do understand some of the appeal.
>One thing I find great about Evernote is multiple methods to
>organize my notes (dates, manual and automatic categories, keywords, etc). It also
>has a great search and export features now.
>
>When Zoot becomes 32-bit and support
>rich texts, I might go back to it as my main organizer.
I’m looking forward to when Evernote has a Pocket PC version, as lately I’ve been trying to work out ways to get most of my notes on my Windows Mobile phone, as well. I’ve tried out DayNotez and like the seamless synchronization between phone and desktop, but I couldn’t figure out a way to also have the same notes on a computer that doesn’t sync to the phone.
One good thing about Zoot is that you can get at least certain items to sync with a Palm or Pocket PC via Outlook. However, this pretty much has to be a small subset of items unless you want all of your notes to be Zoot memos and confined to a single database.
While Ultra Recall has a lot going for it and I’ve used it as my main app for quite a while, I do miss the Zoot rules + actions combo - there is something about having the software do a lot of the upfront categorization and filing that I really miss. In fact, I might just fire it up right now… chronic debilitating CRIMP syndrome kicking in…
Chris
Posted by Derek Cornish
Sep 5, 2006 at 06:46 PM
Daly -
I tried out ConnectedText over the summer, and my views are much the same as yours. Clearly, it is a matter of how people prefer to work, and what they are working on, though. For collaborative work on or off the internet I can see the appeal of wikis. For most of my work, however, wiki software seems to be more trouble than its worth. I find a single-pane outliner a much more effective tool.
I like the text-only orientation of wikis, but find a combination of Zoot and Grandview (or Brainstorm) provieds this, and gives me all the freedom and flexibility I need.
Derek