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December 24, 2006
My free knowledge management solution
It was my uncle who made me a news junkie. He used to live in an apartment just down the street from mine when I was growing up. Every time I visited, he would open a folder with a crafty gleam in his eyes. In it, he would have religiously noted down all the interesting tidbits he saw on TV, in a newspaper or a magazine. And from it came countless trivia questions that I could never answer correctly.I wasn't just determined to pass his test; I had to fight back as well! I got into the habit of reading the newspaper regularly and noting down interesting bits so I too could ask him questions. I never could beat him conclusively; to my exasperation, he would manage to answer my questions easily while still managing to come up with obscure bits of his own. Nevertheless, to this day I remain a news junkie, curating my own mental library of facts.
My brain can only hold so much though, and rather than take the risk of forgetting facts—or worse, muddling them together—I have come up with my own el cheapo (or rather, el freeo) system for managing what I know. My "notebook of wisdom" has recently reincarnated in the twenty-first century as three free programs each for a different purpose:
- Public bookmarking. Any webpage I see that I need to access from everywhere, I put on my del.icio.us page. I also use it to share cool links with the world.
- Private bookmarking. Any webpage I see that I don't need to access from everywhere but want to have accessible for future reference, I put into Evernote. I also use Evernote for stashing away things I don't necessarily want others to see, such as my plans for world domination. Evernote is kind of like Microsoft OneNote, only free, and with some neat searching and tagging features; there is also a premium version with full support for handwritten notes on tablet devices.
- Making sense of it all: mind maps. For quite some time now, I've sketched complex ideas on paper as a set of interconnected nodes. I just didn't know enough people did it that it had a name of its own: mind mapping. I've only recently started making mind maps on the computer, for which I've found Freemind very suitable. Freemind may be a Java desktop application, but it is surprisingly pretty well executed. It may not integrate as well with productivity applications as some of its $229 competitors, but given its lovely price tag of $0, I shouldn't be complaining much. In addition to having some nifty drawing features, it can export maps to HTML and PDF. I've yet to build up a sizeable library of digital mind maps, but I am confident this won't be just a passing fad considering I've been doing them on paper for years.
I don't know if many readers of this blog actually care to organize their knowledge in some way (come on—it's a pretty dorky thing to do, isn't it?), but I'd be curious to know what other people have tried and what has worked well for them.
Posted by Vishy at December 24, 2006 11:19 AM
Comments
Hey Vishy,
Interesting post. I have been organizing my own info for a while and I have found a few things useful, though not sure how reproducible. I have been running a webserver now for about 3 years and it has been worth the extra charge from my ISP for a static IP. On that server I run a local instance of MediaWiki, the wiki application that Wikipedia runs. Here I have kept a journal of thoughts (mostly related to AI/neuro stuff) for quite a while. What I like about keeping everything on the wiki is that I only have one application to back-up, and I have stored all thoughts that I have logged there over many years.. plus I can add to it and access it from anywhere in the world.
Hope you are well this holiday season!
Posted by: Stephen at December 25, 2006 04:02 AM
Hi Stephen,
Great to hear from you. Not surprised you decided to comment on this post after all =)
I really like the idea of a wiki as well, but there are two reasons it's not ideal for my needs. First, it can contain content on any topic whatsoever. If it's used for a restricted domain like neuro/AI, as you do, then the overhead of classifying the articles into an ontology is not that high. If the wiki is to contain the sum total of your knowledge on a wide variety of topics, you essentially end up creating and maintaining your own private instance of Wikipedia, which to me has unacceptable overhead.
Second, our brains have been socialized into reading linearly, left to right downwards from the top of a page. As such, given a sheet of text, we automatically notice the first few words and paragraphs and subconsciously assume they are salient. A mental map breaks this habit and forces you to consider the really important aspects of the subject at hand (something that might not always be apparent in a linear paragraph rendition of the topic) and draw connections as needed between them.
I hope you are having a lovely holiday.
Posted by: Vishy at December 25, 2006 01:50 PM
ഹി സുഹൃത്തേ,
ഞാന് ഒരു സംശയം ചോദിയ്കട്ടേ. ഞാന് കുറച്ച് പഴയ ശ്ലോകങ്ങള് ഒക്കെ മലയാളത്തില് എഴുതി പബ്ലീഷ് ചെയ്യാന് ഉദ്ദേശിയ്കുന്നു. ഏതെങ്കിലും ഓസിയാര് ഫെസിലിറ്റി ഇതിനുണ്ടോ?
(I am from kerala, i would like to upload some slokas in malayalam to web. would u please tell me if there isi some software (OCR, the best recognised one, ehich can do this?)
email atulyaarjun@gmail.com.
thks
atulya
Posted by: atulya at January 2, 2007 05:47 AM
Yo, this is a great idea. I should figure out some way to organize my knowledge too. Most of which is sourced from you!
Posted by: Tank at January 9, 2007 12:12 PM