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Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#71

Post by tokenadult »

Wilya wrote: post #36

Plain text files in a synced directory (I use sparkleshare, but any dropbox-like system will do the trick). I tried many, cloud apps, desktop apps, wikis. But in the end, I was never comfortable with putting all my thoughts in documents in a weird format (at best) or in the cloud (at worst). And most apps didn't offer any huge advantage to compensate for that. I have backups of my notes folder. I can grep through it…

People ask me where many of the references come from for my Hacker News comments, and besides the links I look up on the spot, most come from a text file I keep open all day in my text editor. For other writing projects, I have a lot of other text files. Now that text files recognize Unicode, I am very happy with a simple approach to storing information.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#72

Post by tcpekin »

For notes, I rely 100% on paper. I don't remember things as well when I type them out, and keeping it on paper gives me a sort of spatial awareness on where to find what I need.

However, with research papers now, I've started to use Mendeley. Imports downloaded pdfs and automatically has author, title etc filled in, can download pdfs from a number of the major publication websites and automatically add to your collection, allows sorting via author, year, etc., allows you to take notes and highlight, and has a search bar that searches through all of the papers you have. It additionally can keep your pdfs synced between computers, creates BibTex entries and I believe can help you find related papers, although I haven't used that function. It's a great way to keep semi-organized, and works a lot better than any file-naming system I've tried.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#73

Post by mondaythe5th »

I use text files with tagging and a simple naming convention to manage my web development projects, my house rentals, car insurance, vacation plans, contacts, and more. Most projects have the same core things to keep track of... analytics, adwords, ad campaigns, webmaster tools, hosting details, etc... I use txt files that are backed up with Dropbox.

I add tags within each file like project-businessName tag-adwords tag-campaign priority-high etc.

I use xplorer2 ( a windows explorer replacement $40 ) to filter by tag and or filename.

Example: Say I want to see all outstanding campaigns for a certain client.... I apply the following filter ( alt+h ) then type +tag-campaigns,+project-businessName . Same works for to do lists.... +priority-high,+project-businessName .

I also use a file name convention for super quick opening of whatever customer file I need.

Example: Say I want to check on a clients adwords situation... I hit alt+h to invoke the filter tool.... type adwords businessName to see the exact file I need.

I use two extra free software apps to speed things up further... FindandRunRobot - a launcher Everything ( from voidtools ) - plugs into the above launcher for super fast file opening by name. For example: Say I'm in my browser and want to open up my main file for my client.... I hit alt+space to invoke the launcher tool... then type any part of the file name ... hit enter to open.

I've used wikis before as well as enterprise crm... this is a breath of fresh air!

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#75

Post by pinoyyid »

iamwithnail wrote: post #61
stayparanoid wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly this means? "... This means that by using the Service and uploading Content, you grant Evernote a license to display, perform and distribute your Content..." Source: https://evernote.com/legal/tos.php

You ignored the important qualifier at the end of the sentence: ...to enable Evernote to operate the Service. And the preceding clause: In order to enable Evernote to operate the Service, we must obtain from you certain license and other rights to the Content you submit so that our processing, maintenance, storage, technical reproduction, back-up and distribution and related handling of your Content doesn’t infringe…

exactly right. Under US copyright law, Evernote could be deemed to violate your exclusive right (as copyright holder of your content) to make copies whenever they made a backup. So to avoid any opportunist litigation, you grant them a limited licence to copy your work. The same goes for your right to display/perform.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#77

Post by alexschiff »

I'm the founder, so I'm biased, but I use Fetchnotes for storing most things like this: links, things to check out (books, music, movies, apps, restaurants, places etc), ideas, resources, random thoughts, knowledge/trivia I come across, reminders/tasks and a ton more.

We built it to be simple, lightweight and flexible. Just add a hashtag to a word in a note, and it groups that thought with anything else with that hashtag. Involve another person? I just @-mention their username, email or phone number, or I can send them a link to the note. There's no system to learn — when you want to find something, just click on the tag you used.

Specifically for things I learn, I have a #randomfacts tag that I add things to when I come across an interesting piece of trivia (mostly from articles or audiobooks), and a #thoughts tag for things I think of on my own.

Check it out at www.fetchnotes.com and let me know what you think! I'm at alex@fetchnotes.com

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#78

Post by parallelist »

subsection1h wrote: post #57
parallelist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep same here. org-mode FTW! You can use it as a personal wiki only able to keep all your data in plain text: no web server or database required. I still use filesystem as my primary organization so I only use hyperlinks occasionally. I put the whole load in dropbox so I can access any of it from my phone.

> org-mode FTW! You can use it as a personal wiki Yeah, I use Org mode for my personal wiki. I previously had notes in hundreds of files of various formats, and I eventually moved all of my notes to an Org mode wiki. Also, my wiki has replaced my collection of thousands of bookmarks. I couldn't imagine living without my wiki at this point. It's such an important part of my workflow. Years ago when I decided to switch…

Out of interest how does your wiki integrate with your workflow? Or, in other words, what do you use it for?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?

#80

Post by porker »

cpbotha wrote: post #42

Obsessive note-taking lab-journalling knowledge organizer here. * For years simplenote, first using RespohNotes under Wine, then writing https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy - a cross-platform and open source simplenote client in Python with tikinter. Currently looking for a new maintainer, because: * Currently in an in-between phase editing Gollum wiki markdown pages with emacs 24 (sometimes I also use gollum to access a…

> Currently working on hobby project, which will be the non-linear super visual (spatial perception and memory FTW!) cross-platform (large displays!!) note- and file-organizing interface I've been dreaming about for months now.

That sounds like what I've been dreaming of for years - and be something with multiple views of the same data too. Keep us informed!

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