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Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

getpolarized.io

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Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#91

Post by getpolarized »

mvyo wrote: post #90

> maintaining all your documents in one place, annotating them with highlights, comments, managing your documents with tags, and maintaining key extracted knowledge via spaced repetition > I believe this is a new class of application I haven't used SuperMemo (the app that inspired Anki development), but looks like it has all these features plus tons of other stuff ( https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learnin…

Everything new is inspired by something in the past. Literally nothing comes from whole cloth. I think the point I was trying to make is that we're going to see more of these types of apps.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#92

Post by bachmeier »

burtonator wrote: post #56
bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

> AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Key point of order. We don't actually convert the websites to PDF. We cache the pages offline so you have the original in your archive. This is massively cool and I need to do a better job of making it clear that this isn't just conversion to PDF. > Don't get me…

Maybe a better way to summarize the difficulty I'd have with using Polar heavily is that I put my stuff into projects: something I'm researching, a home improvement project, a new language, etc. It doesn't really seem to fit in with projects, because not everything in a project is going to be PDF files and websites, and I don't see how you can embed Polar in a project either - it's a dump of hundreds of files, and no way to focus on just one project.

> But I don't get your point about a missing tag.

I find tags to be very complex because I have to remember exactly which tags go with which types of material. If I don't attach a particular tag to a file, that file is as good as lost, because it will never come up again.

In contrast, if I organize by projects, I dump all my files into the project and I can come back in two years and have everything I need. Tags just aren't in my experience a substitute for proper organization.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#93

Post by ggm »

It is a problem about "me" but my problem in personal knowledge is not having it (ok: it is, but thats unavoidable) it's my lack of clarity about which of half-a-hundred models of classification to apply at any given time.

I think this is why google free-text search is so powerful: you don't have to have an organizing principle, you just have to know a few key words, or a semantic construct which can be extracted from (meta) data.

OTOH the chaos implicit in my desk (I use volcano filing) probably perpetuates online in this model.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#94

Post by Aeolun »

ggm wrote: post #93

It is a problem about "me" but my problem in personal knowledge is not having it (ok: it is, but thats unavoidable) it's my lack of clarity about which of half-a-hundred models of classification to apply at any given time. I think this is why google free-text search is so powerful: you don't have to have an organizing principle, you just have to know a few key words, or a semantic construct which can be extracted fro…

Since I couldn’t find anything about this. Is the volcano filing model where things simply get stacked up until they erupt?

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#95

Post by dangoor »

_lbaq wrote: post #12

I started use evernote for this, but it dawned of me after a while that if evernote went down, all my data, diaries, notes etc etc was to be locked in and I have to start over. Therefore I'm using org-mode, its just a UTF8 encoded file, even if org-mode disappeared over night, I can still read the data.

Evernote has an export format and a bunch of other tools can import Evernote exports, given how popular Evernote is. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#96

Post by dangoor »

burtonator wrote: post #67

Also, wanted to thanks all you guys for reviewing Polar and there's a lot of good feedback here. In a nutshell: 1. I'm working on more document formats including Markdown and ePub. 2. I'm working on some preliminary support for reference management so we can lookup the full reference info via DOI and have reference formatters for you to use for your research. Some of the DOI storage is already done. 3. I'm working on…

I asked about mobile in a sibling comment.

> 3. I'm working on a webapp and mobile support. Probably a month away.

Okay, that would likely be fine. I'd suggest at least creating a iOS Shortcut to save to your webapp because not being able to save via the normal share sheet would be a drag.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#97

Post by Aeolun »

burtonator wrote: post #66
ausjke wrote: post #20

very interesting, however: "We use cookies to track your usage. We use cookies to track your usage and to determine which features are used to improve the quality of Polar. Additionally, we track application errors which helps us find bugs and to prioritize which issues to fix. This data is sent to 3rd parties which provide the infrastructure necessary to provide the analytics services needed to analyze and store the…

Polar Premium will allow you to disable tracking but you should enable it. you can audit the code but we only track what features you use and so forth. I can't build Polar without the analytics data as I don't know what's breaking and have no ability to optimize it and improve usability.

Maybe we should have an open source error tracking engine that can be self hosted. Too often I see this being the reason people freak out about using a product (only on hackernews though).

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#98

Post by ggm »

Aeolun wrote: post #94
ggm wrote: post #93

It is a problem about "me" but my problem in personal knowledge is not having it (ok: it is, but thats unavoidable) it's my lack of clarity about which of half-a-hundred models of classification to apply at any given time. I think this is why google free-text search is so powerful: you don't have to have an organizing principle, you just have to know a few key words, or a semantic construct which can be extracted fro…

Since I couldn’t find anything about this. Is the volcano filing model where things simply get stacked up until they erupt?

Yes. the model is you stack things, and they form (cinder) cones, and the boring things are either buried, or slip off and fall to the floor, and what is left is relevant or interesting. It's very effective (at forming piles, at least)

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#99

Post by mark_l_watson »

bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

I looked a Polar also, and although it looks good it doesn’t handle all digital assets.

With strong reservations I switched over to using a $12/month G Suite account because it offers a uniform ‘cloud search’ to find and access all of my digital artifacts.

After doing this transition I am happy enough having uniform access to everything, but Google has also fallen down flat on a few things: not letting my GSuite email account be a family member for the large number of purchases I have made over the years with my gmail account; the Google iOS app is really not functional with my G Suite account (no calendar interop, and other limitations). So, they are close to providing a very good $12/month service, but not quite there yet.

For Polar: expand the service to allow email with custom domain, cloud file storage, etc., and unified search, then they will have a dynamite product.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#100

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

burtonator wrote: post #69
eslaught wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't get your point about a missing tag. At least in my experience, interfaces that use tags (Gmail, Google Docs prior to the Drive upgrade) end up being a massive global heap that make it impossible to find anything. Tags help but only marginally, and only when I'm very selective about applying them. When a tag becomes too big it, it's just the soup problem all over again. In my experience with Gmail/Docs I…

I mean a document with no tags is just like sticking something in / Plus, with tags you can have multiple categories. Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time. We will probably add some sort of hierarchy viewer but I'm torn over whether it should be compiled based on the tags or built manually.

> Also, Polar suggest tags for you based on your history. So it gets smarter over time.

You may want to be careful with this. It sounds like it will lead to a small number of tags becoming increasingly massive to the point where they are basically useless and it is difficult to find anything.

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