Tools to Manage Information On Your Personal Hard Drive

I have been battling the management of information on my personal hard drive on my TiBook. This is one element in my Personal Info Cloud (a self-organized information system that is managed by me and is there to assist me when I need information). I have been finding that my organizational structure is lacking on my hard drive as I have cross-purposes for the information.

An example is I am writing an article and I need to track down a journal article I have downloaded to my hard drive in the past. I store research info on my hard drive in directories by topic areas, such as an IA/UCD directory holding directories on user testing, facets, interaction design, etc. There are times when I am working on an article or essay and have stored helpful resources in a research directory in that project's directory, as I like to have information in close proximity to what I am working on. For each idea I am working on I nearly always have an outline building in OmniOutliner format and at least one graphical representation of the issue at hand, done in OmniGraffle. These two or more data sources are the foundation, along with research that help me further formulate the ideas.

I have gone far beyond what folders can offer, even using soft/symbolic links does not help me greatly. These files need metadata so that they can be better stored for searching, but they also need a project home. The project home should allow for note taking and links to files that are on my hard drive as well as external hyper links.

I have a handful of candidates that have been suggested over this past week from friends at the IA Summit in Austin or once I returned home. I will be downloading and trying them beginning next week (post Christening).

The Candidates

I have already loaded Curio and been trying it for a little more than a week. The tool is not as integrated as I would like. I have not had success dropping PDF or OmniGraffle files into the Idea Space. The external files are held in an organizer, but I can not annotate these files in a more direct manner. The Idea Space is much like a lightweight OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, which I have and are better tools. I do like the Dossier, which is a questionairre for each project, but I would like to have more than one available for each project as it currently seems is the limit.

James showed me his implementation of iView, which is mostly a digital asset management system. James does most of his thinking in a notebook (possibly a moleskin) and is filled with text and wonderful drawings to capture his ideas. James in turn scans the contents of his notebook into his laptop and uses iView to annotate and view his ideas. The digital assets can be annotated and then sorted and grouped. This seems like it would work for some of my information, but not everything for me. I have not had a scanner for about a year and have not been used to having our new scanner available again so that I could scan in my graph paper notebook.

Jesse brought up VoodooPad as an option. VoodooPad is built on a Wiki technology. I am not a fan of Wiki technology for group project tracking, but for self annotation and having the ability to link to files on my hard drive by drag-and-drop I can see the value. Tanya mentioned she had a similar system using a personal Wiki that worked very well for herself in new environments. VoodooPad may be my next try as I really like having the ability to cross-link ideas.

I have been trying StickyBrain 2 for a few months now, but I have not been fully dedicated to trying it. The initial idea behind StickyBrain works for me, but the interface and the junk preloaded in it have cluttered the interface before I even began. The interface to add info into StickyBrian is very nice as it is in the mouse-related menu (right mouse click for those with such devices). Content in StickyBrain can be categorized, but that can get out of hand. StickyBrain also as a search tool, but unless I have annotated the information correctly, I do not always do so, I can not find it.

Bryan suggested AquaMinds NoteTaker, which I have not seen in action, but the site does offer very good movies that explain how information is entered and how the too can be used. To some degree this is how I use OmniOutliner, but NoteTaker seems to have far more functionality. This will be one I try and compare to OmniOutliner.

Lastly is Tinderbox a note taking tool and idea organizer. Tinderbox's strengths seem to be based on getting this information on to the Web, which is not my initial need. I know a couple people who have been very happy with Tinderbox in the past, but I do not know if they are still using Tinderbox. I looked at this tool when I was thinking about a change from my vanderwal.net weblogging tool that I build, but I was not thinking in terms of finding a tool to better organize my digital thoughts and artifacts of thought.

Conclusion

I will be downloading these of the next couple weeks and I will be writing reviews on them as I try them. I have a couple articles and other items due in the next couple weeks so I may be texting by fire and not having too much time to summarize the results of my testing.

Keeping Found Things Found

This weeks New York Times Circuits article: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites, which covers the Keep Found Things Found research project at University of Washington. The program is summarized:

The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are looking for (books, articles, web pages, CDs, etc.) from a very large set of possibilities. This classic problem has been studied in many variations and has been addressed through a rich diversity of information retrieval tools and techniques.

This topic is at the heart of the Personal Information Cloud. How does a person keep the information they found attracted to themselves once they found that information. Keeping the found information at hand to use when the case to use the information arises is a regular struggle. The Personal Information Cloud is the rough cloud of information that follows the user. Users have spent much time and effort to draw information they desire close to themselves (Model of Attraction). Once they have the information, is the information in a format that is easy for the user or consumer of the information to use or even reuse.

Building a Web Based E-Notebook

The Journal of Digital Information has an article on Implementation Challenges Associated with Developing a Web-based E-notebook by Yolanda Jacobs Reimer and Sarah A. Douglas. This Journal article seems to cover good research information on personal information aggregation. The e-notebooks discussed are similar to weblogs, but are means of storing information for personal retrieval. The bibliography included in this is one that is worth some digging also.

A Look at iPIM and Chandler

There are two articles that are direct hits on managing information for the individual and allowing the individual to use the information when they needed it and share it as needed. Yes, this is in line with the Personal Information Cloud.

The first article, The inter-personal information manager (iPim) by Mark Sigal about the problem with users finding information and how the can or should be able to then manage that information. There are many problems with applications (as well as the information format itself) that inhibit users reuse of information. In the comments of the article there is a link to products that are moving forward with information clients, which also fit into the Personal Information Cloud or iPIM concept. (The Personal Information Cloud tools should be easily portable or mobile device enabled or have the ability to be retrieved from anywhere sent to any device.

The second article is from the MIT Technology Review (registration required) titled Trash Your Desktop about Mitch Kapor (of founding Lotus Development fame) and his Open Source project to build Chandler. Chandler is not only a personal information manager (PIM), but the tool is a general information manager that is contextually aware. The article not only focusses on Mitch and the product (due late 2004), but the open and honest development practices of those that are building Chandler at the Open Source Application Foundation for Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. distribution.

RSS on PDAs and Information Reuse

Three times the past week I have run across folks mentioning Hand/RSS for Palm. This seems to fill the hole that AvantGo does not completely fill. Many of the information resources I find to be helpful/insightful have RSS feeds, but do not have a "mobile" version (more importantly the content is not made with standard (X)HTML validating markup with a malleable page layout that will work for desktop/laptop web browsers and smaller mobile screens).

I currently pull to scan then read content from 125 RSS feeds. Having these some of these feeds pulled and stored in my PDA would be a great help.

Another idea I have been playing with is to pull and convert RSS feeds for mobile browser access and use. This can be readily done with PHP. It seems that MobileRSS already does something like this.

Content, make that information in general, stored and presented in a format that is only usable in one device type or application is very short sighted. Information should be reusable to be more useful. Users copy and paste information into documents, todo lists, calendars, PDAs, e-mail, weblogs, text searchable data stores (databases, XML respositories, etc.), etc. Digital information from the early creation was about reusing the information. Putting text only in a graphic is foolish (AIGA websites need to learn this lesson) as is locking the information in a proprietary application or proprietary format.

The whole of the Personal Information Cloud, the rough cloud of information that the user has chosen to follow them so that it is available when they need that information is only usable if information is in an open format.

Syndicated from Off the Top :: vanderwal.net

Welcome to the Personal Info Cloud

Welcome to the Personal Information Cloud.

In the digital realm we have various pockets of information all tied to clouds. The most commonly understood cloud is the Global Information Cloud, i.e. the Internet. There is a plethora of information in this Info Cloud, but often there is too much information and the users are flooded with information choices and most often can not control all the information is or could be useful to them. Often the focus with content creators and Information Architects is with getting the user and the information together. This attraction interaction between user and information is often were content creators stop. There is little heed given to how the user will consume and often reuse that information.

Personal User of Information

The Personal Information Cloud, or as it was initially stated in the Model of Attraction a rough cloud of information that follows the user, is the next step to understanding how to best create, store, and make information reusable. Two common information elements that are often reused are dates (calendar items) and contact information. Users often want to easily put a date into their calendar on their computer, which can then be synched with their PDA or mobile phone, so that they can remember when a street fair, dentist appointment, cocktail party, meeting, etc. is going to take place. Contact information is much the same to ensure the user will show up at the right place for a meeting, interview, cocktail party, etc. These types of information do the user minimal use just stored in a desktop computer, but have more value in a portable device that the user has with themselves when the time comes that they will need the information. Hence this portability of information that follows the user is the Personal Info Cloud