About two years ago I started a personal Wiki with . I used that Wiki for my learning experiences, project notes, diary, scribbling, to-do lists, etc. I also started to store project-related documents in it. And it has served me very well. But I’m now looking for something better. So first I’ll write my requirements here in the hope that somebody out there has the answer for me.

Requirements


  • Lets me write articles and easily edit them as well
  • Easy linking between articles
  • Basic formatting (bold, cursive, quotes, source code, lists, tables)
  • Can store uploaded documents and index their contents (PDF, ideally also the OpenOffice.org documents)
  • Very quick search
  • Open source and/or open document format (I want no lock-in on my most valuable data)
  • I'm willing to pay

Programs

I'll write here about the programs I already know and have tried out. This part will get updated over time.

Does very well against my requirements. It's very easy to write and edit articles, hyperlinking works great, the formatting is sufficient for me and I can upload files. Also has a search (but does not index files). But generally the application is very slow on my local laptop and I don't want to move it to a server because I need it offline as well. It is free software and using a nice MySQL database layout counts as open format for me as well. So basically if I could get it to be a lot faster and to index files it might actually be enough for me.

Is a Wiki application for the local (Mac OS X) desktop. Has some nice features, for example I liked the fact that names automatically get linked to the Mac OS X address book. The formatting is too basic and for example tables seem very fragile. Linking works easily enough and creating and editing is also quick enough. I worked with it for a short while but then switched back to Knowiki. One concern is, that the application only works on OS X. And I might well switch to another operating system again in a few years and don't want the lock in.

That's the list for now, I'll keep you updated with other applications I try. And of course I'm glad about any suggestions about how my readers manage their stuff.

12:06 - Now who would have thought that. Personal knowledge management is a term that actually exists. It's abbrevated as PKM and there is a whole PKM movement (and people who think that movement is wrong, too). How nice. I have therefore now tagged a few documents at del.icio.us and am using the PKM tag for that, if you want to follow me in this quest.