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Idea Management/Navigation Software? 66

Posted by Cliff from the organizing-your-random-thoughts dept.
psychonaut asks: "My work involves a lot of research and writing, and I often find myself jotting down brief notes on scraps of paper, in text files, in the margin of books, etc. The idea is to later use these ideas as the basis for various papers or even books I plan to write. However, because I have no central repository for all these ideas, finding long-forgotten thoughts and citations months after I've recorded them becomes a nightmare. Can anyone recommend an open source knowledge management, visualization, and navigation software I could use to bring together and classify all these disjointed ideas?"

"The system should be hypertext-based, allowing explicit links between nodes, but it would be nice if it could also derive some relations on its own. Having built-in support for referencing web links, printed publications (BibTeX integration?), and arbitrary files would be great. Text-based and perhaps also non-text-based searching capabilities (e.g., graphical visualization of node relationships) would also be very useful.

I've looked at some wiki systems but the choices seem overwhelming, and most of them are geared towards collaborative rather than individual work. Is there some wiki or database system that does what I need, or should I be looking for something in an entirely different paradigm?"
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Idea Management/Navigation Software? More

Idea Management/Navigation Software?

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  • Bite your pride (Score:4, Informative)

    by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:47PM (#8299874) Journal
    If you can bite your pride and use closed source, Microsoft One Note sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

    • Re:Bite your pride (Score:5, Informative)

      by CoolHnd30 ( 89871 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:56PM (#8299941)
      Rather than going Microsoft, maybe you should use freemind [sourceforge.net]. I've been using it the last six months on Linux and Windows, and am very pleased with it.
      • Rather than going Microsoft, maybe you should use freemind. I've been using it the last six months on Linux and Windows, and am very pleased with it.

        Now I know nothing about Freemind beyond what I saw following the parent post's link, but the when front page of the site asks, "Did FreeMind make you angry?" you really have to wonder.
      • I've been using Freemind for a few weeks now. I like the idea behind the mind management software. Very freeform, which is the way my brain tends to function. Just don't spend more time organizing your thoughts than you do actual work.
        • Just don't spend more time organizing your thoughts than you do actual work.

          FreeMind is just a way to write down Mind maps [peterussell.com]. I have tried to use mind maps for my notes at school and when I read some important book. What I don't like about mind maps is that they focus on the organisation, and as a result, the information itself is not prioritized as much as it should be. When I "read" the mind maps after some time, I'm surprised of how little of it is neccessary.

          Basicly what I'm trying to say is that min

      • I see that FreeMind is based on the idea of card catalogue system which Robert Piersig describes in the book Lila. This is definately a program I'll try since the moment I read that book I wanted a digital version of it.

        FYI in Lila Pirsig describes a system where he keeps his ideas in a card catalogue system similar to those used in libraries. There are different categories as well as meta categories which has "programs" such as "Reorganise this section" and such. It's really quite a facinating read.
  • That's what wiki / blog software is all about. Wiki probably better as you can organize things in a more natural way.
    • Submitter asks:

      I've looked at some wiki systems but the choices seem overwhelming, and most of them are geared towards collaborative rather than individual work. Is there some wiki or database system that does what I need, or should I be looking for something in an entirely different paradigm?"

      And you respond with:

      That's what wiki / blog software is all about.

      Talk about helpful ...

    • Re:Wiki or blog software (Score:5, Informative)

      by WayneConrad ( 312222 ) * <`moc.ingay' `ta' `darnocw'> on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:42PM (#8300816) Homepage

      Yes, minimalists love wikis. I'll describe a Wiki for those who haven't seen one: A wiki is a web site where you can modify the pages (usually cgi driven). In its purest form, a wiki is a collection of web page anyone can read or modify, but most wiki software now allows you to restrict access in various ways. Most wikis also version control their pages, so you can undo mistakes made by you, or if it's a world-writable wiki, undo mistakes made by others.

      Ward Cunningham wrote the canonical wiki [c2.com], but there are many others [c2.com] now.

      A wiki is somewhat easy to modify (typing your changes into a CGI text box is OK but not the greatest), very easy to search, and pretty easy to link pages together. It's biggest advantage is that you can read and edit it from from anywhere you have a browser. I use a wiki to store notes and links -- I don't keep bookmarks on my browser anymore, so now it doesn't matter which browser I'm using or what computer I'm on. I just set my browser home page to my wiki page that has all my links on it.

      If you don't want to run your own, there are wiki sites that will lend you space to do your own thing in (Here's one public wiki [swiki.net], but there are others [swiki.net].

      • I've looked at a number of Wikis for doing exactly this.

        I ended up settling on moin [sourceforge.net], for the following reasons:

        1. It's easy to set up

        2. Stores everything in plain text files: no fancy SQL database backend that I don't need for this small/scale stuff, and I trust text files.

        3. It supports uploading of files as attachments to pages in the wiki. So if you come to a PDF document you want to save, you can easily dump it into the wiki.

        So far, it's been a pretty nice way to organize stuff like this.

  • High-tech solution (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I recommend a notebook, and a pencil.
    • More like a PDA of some sort if you want to be serious about your "High-tech solution" topic. Most of them have notepads anyway. You could find all manner of low-cost PDAs ($50-$100) to fit these limited needs.
      • A PDA is probably not a solution to his problem. But it is great to jot down little notes that you may use in the near future. For example, if someone is talking about a software program (or TV show, car, or whatever your interest is) you write it down in your PDA. Every once in a while, you look at your notes and you find all sorts of interesting software, etc. that you had completely forgotten about. Much more useful than a sticky that you will lose when you empty out your pockets at the end of the day.

  • I Have A Hideously Bad Idea... (Score:3, Funny)

    by X-wes ( 629917 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:51PM (#8299902)

    If you don't care how crude this idea is, you could try this out:

    Take all of the scraps you write, and spend a bit of time making 75-100 DPI scans of them. Place all of the images into a folder for "notes" and such. Inside this folder, categorise all the files by using folders/directories.

    This does not meet the requirements you set out; and like I said, it's horribly crude. However, it is simple to implement and can easily be combined with any web server software to form an easily accessible knowledge base.

    Being a student, this is the system I use to categorise my notes and papers. It is simply not the best system, but it rarely gets any simpler than this.

    Hope this was at least slightly interesting.

  • Maybe try DENIM? (Score:5, Informative)

    by wan-fu ( 746576 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:58PM (#8299956)
    The DENIM Project [berkeley.edu] might be something you could look into. It is a tool for web page and UI design but it should be easily adaptable for your needs (especially with its export to HTML). You could also try Visual Thought [web.cern.ch] though it is no longer developing nor supported (but is more tailored to what you're describing than DENIM).

  • Emacs is what you need (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I sure it has what you want somewhere in it.

  • try a book (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JackBuckley ( 696547 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:59PM (#8299972) Homepage
    I don't mean this as flamebait, but how about keeping a medium-sized notebook with you all the time. As a professor and researcher, I have found that nothing works better than an "idea book" for keeping notes from reading, paper ideas, sketches, equations, proofs, diagrams, etc., all together.

    I have a small notebook (between 3x5 and 8.5x11) that I keep in my briefcase to and from work and jot everything down in it. It never crashes, it takes only seconds to include complex graphs or equations (no equation editor or LaTeX tags needed!), and can even be backed up via xerox (which I have done with ripped pages--just staple the copied page back in!).

    • I agree. The biggest thing here is that you won't find a nifty new software bit that will magically make all your ideas come together. You'll have to organize yourself before any solutions people mention here will do any good. The greatest software in the world won't help you if you're still making notes in book margins and on scraps of paper.

      Get a notebook and pen that you can carry in a briefcase, jacket pocket, or pants pocket. Keep them with you as much as possible, and force yourself to pull them

    • of sketchbooks and Idea Knot although I am going to try
      MAK [sourceforge.net] as a group project.

      It's awfully dangerous to be honest around here. You get modded as a troll. Actually, I have three sketchbooks going right now.
    • Couple the book with Post-It Tape Flags and you can quickly and easily cross-reference your ideas and can use the tape flags as colour-coded bookmarks.
    • I don't mean this as flamebait, but how about keeping a medium-sized notebook with you all the time.

      I'll second this one. I kept a notebook for about 3 years of these sorts of things. I always dated the pages too in order to establish when I came up with things.

      In the last year or so, I've created a small mysql database where I can jot down notes, mark entries as "related to" other entries. It's not perfect but phpMyAdmin is mind-bogglingly simple to use.

      Now I just need a way of representing the inf

  • Personal Brain (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dFaust ( 546790 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:01PM (#8299985)
    It's not open source, and you do have to sign up to download it (just username and email, I think... and I've been on their list for years and only get maybe 2 emails a year from them)... but it is free and it's a pretty nifty piece of software, allowing you to make large webs of thoughts, relate any node to any other node, link files & emails, etc.

    If you're running Windows, it's at least worth checking out. http://www.thebrain.com [thebrain.com]

    • Re:Personal Brain (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @01:28AM (#8302019) Homepage
      Why doesn't the Open Source community come up with a common XML foundation for information organization and design toward it?

      Seriously, by starting with VERY BASIC meta tags (NAME, KEYWORD, DESCRIPTION) we could exponentially expand the productivity of OpenOffice, etc...

      The KEY (no pun intended), however, is going to be linking these features among different apps. I can't even count how many times I've done a "locate project | grep png" and NEVER found the image that I was looking for.

      Unity is key...

      • Re:Personal Brain (Score:3, Insightful)

        by __past__ ( 542467 )
        Why should one come up with a new one when there already are plenty XML formats that can be used for knowledge organization, like XML Topic Maps and RDF?

      • Re:Personal Brain (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jdclucidly ( 520630 )
        The problem is that information is rarely heirarchial and XML only serves to force us in to making it be stored heirarchially. Information is more like a web of relationships. In graph theory, this is a simple, connected graph.
    • I agree, for Windows uswes this is a really good tool. They have come a long way in their work and have developed a very stable product which lets the user navigate by ideas and relationships as well as more traditional methods.
  • there's an app for osx called notebook, or somthing similar. i'll let you look for it on versiontracker. sorry i can't be of more help. good luck to you.

  • Palm Piece (Score:5, Interesting)

    by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:07PM (#8300021) Homepage Journal
    I use Memo Plus on the Palm, which is merely a hierarchical notepad.

    I have things sorted into a hierarchy that works for me.

    But oh, how I would love a cross-platform product that offered deep integration with email, address book, bookmarks, calendar, and random notes, with multiple hierarchical and/or directed graph maps, and good search capabilities. In my fantasy world, it'd run on my PC and on my Kyocera smart phone, and would be compatible with stuff on both ends: Firefox, Thunderbird, the Palm address book, etc. If I didn't have a job, that's what I'd be building right now...

  • Visual Tools for Brainstorming (Score:3, Informative)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:29PM (#8300180) Homepage
    Try some Visual Brainstorming Tools [xml-dev.com]

  • MindManager by Mindjet (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bazouel ( 105242 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:32PM (#8300205)

    Have a look at Mind Manager [mindjet.com] by Mindjet.

    I use it regularly and I'm still finding new uses for it. It's *very* easy to use yet powerful.

    • I've got to agree... I've been experimenting with the trial version, and am quite impressed. I'm finding more and more uses for it the more I've played with it. I'm about ready to purchase a copy, even though it only runs on Windows. Anyone else request a native Linux version from MindJet?

  • Bugzilla (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by T-Ranger ( 10520 )
    Products: World Politics; US Forgin Policy; US Domestic Policy; Toadys Shopping List.

  • xaraya (Score:4, Informative)

    by an_mo ( 175299 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:45PM (#8300326) Journal
    I have set up a cms (content management system) to do just what you mention and it is working great.

    Contrary to most other cms'es of the PHP-Nuke series, xaraya [xaraya.com] has the flexibility to manage all publication types (FAQ, articles, reviews) into one single module, which avoids lots of clutter. You can add fields to each type. Myself, I have created a "research blog" publication type (where I describe what I do each day in a blog format), and then "reviews" (for the books I read), "articles" (the articles I read), "todo", "docs" (for things I keep forgetting). Each of these publication types have one or more category trees associated with them (with some trees overlapping) so that I can search/display my blogs by category and/or by pubtype. Finally, I have set it up so that only I can access it. The permission system allows for you to set up different kind of access to the different pages depending on various criteria.

    Using a full blown cms may be overkill but the flexibility and extendability is great. To mention your needs, you can use the autolink module to generate automatic links in your modules, and so on..., search works great, for BibTeX you'd probably need to create your own hooks, which I believe vouldn't be terribly difficult.

    A wiki might work, but your pages would look identical across tasks and categories, and I like the ability to visualize different pubtypes and/or categories differently. The tendency to generate a mess is enormous in wikis, but with a single user less so. Good luck.

  • Slim pickings (Score:5, Informative)

    by eykd ( 218920 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:52PM (#8300388) Homepage
    Open source offerings in this area are slim to none, and I've tried everything I can get my hands on. The best I've found is KeyNote, a Windows-only tabbed notebook/hierarchical outliner. I recently converted all my text-file notes over to KeyNote, and found it to be a sweet little package. Highly recommended, although it doesn't really meet any of your other specifications (no hyperlinking, etc., outline-view only).

    If you don't mind a web environment, Wikis [c2.com] provide easy editing and hyperlinking, but visualization is not their strong suit. If you like the idea of wikis, but don't want the web, and don't mind paying $12 for closed-source, WikidPad [jhorman.org] is an excellent, flexible, Windows-only option (and mildly extendable with an embedded Python interpreter). Combines a tree/outline view and Wiki-like syntax & automatic hyperlinking.

    If you don't mind closed source, The Literary Machine [literarymachine.com] provides a lot of power in a Windows environment. The basic version was free last I checked, though he's ceased development on it in favor of the Pro version ($20), which is being actively developed and integrates a number of new features (but I haven't tried it yet). It organizes everything based on a non-hierarchical keyword association system, and while it takes some getting used to (and can be downright messy sometimes), it does allow for the discovery of connections between notes that you might not have put together otherwise.

    If you don't mind closed source, paying through the nose ($145), and OS X, then there is one app which fits all of your other qualifications: Eastgate's Tinderbox [eastgate.com] has powerful hyperlinking, programmable agents, RSS and web integration, powerful search, graphical visualization, and plenty more. To tell you the truth, my next computer will probably be a Mac because of this one, though a Windows version [eastgate.com] is on the horizon (was slated for an early 2004 release, but looks like it's slipped back to Real Soon Now). This has been the sleeper hit of the past couple years--everyone who uses it raves about it, but it's relatively unknown.

  • todo.txt as recommended at ETCON (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quiddity ( 106640 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:03PM (#8300481)
    life hacks [craphound.com] notes by cory doctorow (more at bottom [oreillynet.com])
    "It's the 10-second rule: if you can't file something in 10 seconds, you won't do it. Todo.txt involves cut-and-paste, the simplest interface we can imagine."
    "Power-users don't trust complicated apps. Every time power-geeks has had a crash, s/he moves away from it. You can't trust software unless you've written it -- and then you're just more forgiiving.
    Text files are portable (except for CRLF issues) between mac and win and *nix.
    Geeks will try the Brain, etc, but they want to stay in text."
  • SOmeone once said to me "I don't want to change over until someone shows me something that beats Lotus Notes and a scanner."

    I know it's probably not very helpful, but honestly I'm pretty cynical about high-tech solutions for these things.

    On the other hand, emacs with Wiki mode isn't bad....
  • There's a great program called ThoughtTracker which seems designed for this sort of thing. I don't have a link (it's in Debian; one of the reasons I use Debian is so that I don't need to remember links) but ti should be easy to find.

    Basically you have text nodes with arbitrary names which can be "linked" with any other nodes. You can thus follow a train of thought by at a later date going to a node, and then following its links for as long as the related thoughts go.

  • Idea Management (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you have not seen this program, Check it out. It is a mature product, not open source however http://web.singnet.com.sg/~axon2000/index.htm
  • Inspiration... available on PC and Mac... its good for flowcharting things, making ideamaps, brainstorming, or just note taking...

  • I use Treepad (Score:2, Informative)

    by rhild ( 659603 )
    Treepad [treepad.com] is a tree-based PIM, organizer, word processor with too many features to list here, that I've been using for about a year.

    The combination of organizing your notes in a tree, with hyperlinks between nodes, and a good search feature makes it a great way to keep track of things.

    It isn't open source, but there is a free 'lite' version, plus a couple inexpensive full-featured versions (including versions for Linux).
  • i've been looking for a similar tool myself. have you checked out a tool called infoSelect by a company called microLogic (www.miclog.com)?
  • Some people think The One True Way is to use outliners. (shrug) It depends on your work style.

    This really useful page...

    http://john.redmood.com/organizers.html [redmood.com]

    ... lists a bunch of Windows outliners, along with personal opinion on usage and features.

    I have been in your exact shoes and have installed Twiki [twiki.org] and have the following generalization...

    Wiki's aren't as easy to use as they seem. When using a wiki, there's actually a very distinct (but non-obvious) obstacle course between the urge to write
  • I had the same question a while back, and since I don't always like a simple answer, I came to love the Everything [everydevel.com] Engine. It is a web app, written in perl, and runs on a webserver providing a node based frame work with certain things, like permissions and access writes, already inherent inside.

    With a basic setup, it might help with what you need.

    With a little tweaking (perl knowledge, html knowledge, a little patience...) it can do most anything "data" and quite a lot more [everything2.com].

    -swinters

  • One of the reasons Mac OS X is so exciting is all the new apps being developed for just what you describe. Tinderbox, BTW, being the least interesting, oldest and clunkiest of the bunch. I kinda resent that guy's riding the tails of new-paradigm apps like DEVONThink - clipping live web pages, in the built-in browser! - when Tinderbox has been around forever. It works if your brain works exactly like his. What I really respect are the apps that respect me, The Smart Braindumps, with intelligent retrieval. Th

  • Try kaspaliste (Score:3, Informative)

    by TrackerChamp ( 595492 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @05:18AM (#8302877)
    You might want to try the KDE program Kaspaliste [sourceforge.net] which is more or less what you are looking for.

    Kaspaliste is a literature database. It handles all kinds of books, articles, journals, webpages etc. The database goes beyond storing bibliographical information. There is the possibility to create annotated links between pieces of information (like the content of a book chapter) and to group links into categories.

    The user interface works just like a web browser: You may follow the links to open records. You may walk back and forward through previously edited records, change fields, and create or delete links, publication, authors etc. on the fly with just one mouseclick.

    Kaspaliste does not only store pieces of information about publications. It stores files as well. Kaspaliste handels various formats like html, pdf, ps, dvi and pictures (depends on your KDE-installation since the kpart-technology is used). You can for example store ocr'ed parts of interesting publications. The fulltext search covers these files.

  • Thanks to everyone for all your suggestions. A lot of you are recommending MS-Windows programs, which I can't use (since as I mentioned, I'm running GNU/Linux). Perhaps they'll help other Slashdotters who are Windows users and are wondering the same thing. However, there were several suggestions for some GNU/Linux programs which I am now checking out. I don't think I ever would have found them without being referred to them here. :)

  • And another.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by tyndyll ( 653821 )
    Again, not open source but what I've foun dvery handy for colating information is MyInfo [milenix.com]. I've used for everything website design to D&D campaing planning. Also exports to HTML and pretty cheap too...

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