Wiki, wiki, wow!
I mentioned yesterday how I was looking for an new note-taker/information manager utility which had keywords. Well, since yesterday was my day off, I decided to devote the full day to my search 🙂
First, I went through page after page of Google searches and came up with a couple of possibilities – TexNotes Pro and TaoNotes 3D Pro. They both had keyword-based searching of notes but the UI of each app itself turned out to be the problem :p In the case of TexNotes Pro, each note is opened in a new tab and there is no easy way to close tabs quickly. So, given that I go through dozens of notes in a given work day, I’m going to end up with a really cluttered UI pretty soon with TexNotes. I believe TexNotes is meant for somebody who has multiple large notes. Not somebody like me, who has tons of tiny notes 🙂 The issue with TaoNotes was similar – I didn’t like the UI or the way it was laid out. It seemed way too clunky :p
At this point, I had another idea. Keywords was what I had been looking for up till then but what about tags? Tagging has been pretty big lately and there had to be somebody who thought of combining information management and tagging? I found that there were a lot of people who talked about the "concept" (mostly with regards to web 2.0) but there didn’t appear to be any actual desktop apps around (at least ones that I could find via a Google search) that did what I wanted. Then I had another idea – what about a wiki? Or rather, a personal wiki?
This led me to a list of desktop Wiki software at Wikipedia which in turn led to several possible candidates. The most likely looking were Notebook, WikiPad and TiddlyWiki – though I actually found TiddlyWiki elsewhere and later saw it listed in the Wikipedia list under a different section :p Notebook was a straightforward note taking app which behaved like a wiki. WikiPad had an automatic treeview created from the wiki entries but it didn’t have tags and it used non-wiki syntax to format the entries, as did Notebook. So the sole contender left was TiddlyWiki. (Actually, that’s not quite how it went down – I found TiddlyWiki before I found the other two but it reads better this way :p)
Now TiddlyWiki deserves a paragraph to itself because it’s quite the marvel 🙂 First of all, there is no installation. Secondly, it’s just one simple (OK, maybe not quite simple …) HTML file. Yes, that’s all there is to TiddlyWiki! You download the HTML file, load it in your browser and you have a wiki. I really like this solution. There is no complicated installation. No software to lug around. And no proprietary file formats to deal with. All my information is in one HTML file which lets me access the information I want, the way I want! And it supports tagging! What more could you ask for? (I don’t yet know what more I can ask for but for the moment, I’m using TiddlyWiki as my new information storage/management engine …)
sorry for the multiple comment – I used to use PostIt desktop notes – talk about clutter!! I wish it supported key words because the manual organization needed makes it too cumbersome to use effectively.
I’ve re-installed EverNote myself and have found it to be pretty nifty 🙂 I’m torn between TiddlyWiki and EverNote now :p I love the fact that TiddlyWiki runs in FireFox itself but hate having to format every entry I make. EverNote has everything I wanted but it’s a separate program sucking up resources … decisions, decisions!
And no problem about the multiple comments, Dawno :p The more the merrier! I’ve used a couple of the e-PostIt note apps. TurboNotes was the one I liked the best but I don’t think I recall one with keywords/tagging capability though. Not to say there isn’t one – just don’t remember one myself 🙂
Actually, I did use EverNote at one point too :p Just not sure if it supported keywords/tagging at that point. That wasn’t too big a concern for me at that point but if I recall correctly, I got tired of rolling the notes back and forth and wanted a treeview structure where I could easily find what I wanted. So I switched to TreeDBNotes. Of the current crop of stuff I’m evaluating, I think TiddlyWiki (I keep calling it TiddlyWinks :p) is the best. At least, that’s the one I’ve settled on but I’m going to go back and give the latest version of EverNote a look. Thanks for mentioning it 🙂
I’m a devoted Evernote user – it came with my Wacom tablet and I love it!
I’ve also just started a Wiki on SeedWiki for writing collaborations with a review site I’m the review coordinator for…I’m a total wiki novice, but I have high hopes.
As an aside, I went looking for Wiki for Dummies and it doesn’t come out till October – behind the curve some, eh?? 😛
Check this out: http://www.evernote.com
My friends and I have been on a similar search. Let me know how it goes.
BTW – I’m testing ‘Blog’ as we speak.
Carey
I’m a notetaking addict too, and I’m still a Keynote user, which I think is great. But I’ve come to the same problem as you, how to remember WHERE, in WHICH tab, WHICH tree branch have I put that important information. So I’m also trying TiddlyWiki, and it looks great. It’s magic to put all in a HTML file, whereas Wikipad creates dozens of files. But you must recognize it’s not very user friendly, so the perfect solution is yet to come. Ok, I’m a kind of a Nerd, so I can deal with an interface that would be a nightmare for most people, but I’ll keep looking for something easier to use, I’ll even try to develop it.